by Bruce Hanley ---

As a CD you are responsible for the conduct of the contest. There are some minimal rules cited below that you must follow in order for your contest to count for regional points. However, beyond these, it is your contest and you can run it as you see fit. Your primary job is safety - at all times to run the contest in a manner that assures the protection and safety of participants and spectators. Beyond safety, this paper is offered simply as a reminder of all the things you might need or want as a part of your contest. It is aimed at a "typical" two day weekend IMAC contest.

You should also review the IMAC Contest Standards Guide. This document is available on the IMAC National web site. It covers the essentials of what must be included in a contest to qualify it as an IMAC contest, handling of Knowns and Unknowns and a Code of Conduct for participants and spectators. As the CD it is your job to make sure that these guidelines are followed.

NOTE: In what follows there are several references to the AMA, its forms and reports. These may be obtained from the AMA web site. However, if the contest is being held outside the USA, the sanction of the event should be obtained from the governing body of the host country. Similarly, any activities noted herein should be conducted in accordance with the requirements of the governing body of the host country using its corresponding forms and procedures.

Content:

- Rules

- What Preliminary Tasks You Must Do

- What Physical Things & Equipment You Will Need

- What Personnel You Will Need

- What Are The Norms For The Weekend

- What Are The Financials

- What Must Get Done On Friday

- What Must Get Done On Saturday Morning

- What Must Get Done On Saturday Afternoon

- What Must Get Done On Sunday Morning

- What Must Get Done On Sunday Afternoon

- What Happens When Its All Over

- Miscellaneous Suggestions & Equipment Availability

 

Rules:

If you want your contest to count for regional points you need to satisfy the following:

- The contest must occur within the regional boundaries of the IMAC region awarding those points. If not located within the region, the Regional Director can extend an exemption in order to have the contest count for regional points. Make your request via email.

- You must obtain an AMA sanction. The sanction request must be received by the AMA at least 30 days prior to the contest date. Also, you should note on the form any variance from standard rules that you intend for your contest. The most common are:

* waiving sound testing

* waiving the pilot panel requirement

- The contest must be run in accordance with the current AMA Scale Aerobatic rules and safety practices less any specific exceptions you cited in the approved contest sanction form.

- The contest must be run in accordance with the current IMAC Contest Standards Guide.

- The contest must be scored in accordance with the host Region’s scoring practice and must include the Senior Championship. Scores must be provided to the Regional scorekeepper within seven days of the contest day.

- After the contest is held, the AMA Contest Directors Report must be submitted to the AMA within 7 days of the contest date. Attach the final standings for each class to this report

Beyond these items you can do whatever you wish. Any deviations from rules or common practice should be published in the contest flyer to give participants advance notice of what you are planning.

Note that in your contest you do not have to offer all five classes. You may run a restricted contest with fewer than five classes if that is appropriate to your area and particular situation. Also, there is no requirement that a contest must be at least two days. You may have a one day contest if that better suits your situation. Both of these are deviations from the IMAC Contest Standards Guide and as such, you need to obtain approval for these from the Regional Director.

 

What preliminary tasks must you do:

- Fill out and send in the AMA sanction application. This needs to be done at least three months in advance of your contest date in order to get the event listed in the AMA magazine. If you don’t care about the magazine listing, the minimum lead time for sanction submittal is 30 days prior to the contest date. Note: For the AMA, the contest sanction request and $20 fee is to be sent to the District Contest Coordinator - not to AMA headquarters. The District Contest Coordinators and their addresses are listed in the AMA magazine, Model Aviation, in the "Focus On Competition" section.

- At least ten days before your contest date, submit the request for Unknowns to IMAC National. To do this you need to go to the National web site and find the "CD Corner" page where you register your request. Note that you must log into the National web site in order to see the Unknown request page, i.e., you must be an IMAC member or have a member do it for you. Request and delivery of the Unknowns is all handled by email. The Unknowns for a particular weekend are typically sent out on the Monday before the contest weekend. Note that if you, the CD, are competing you must designate someone else who is not competing to receive, duplicate and manage the Unknowns. The request form on the National site provides for this.

- About 2 to 3 weeks before the contest date post to RCU, Flying Giants, and GSAL notification of the contest. As a part of these posts, it would be good to include a link to a Flyer on your club web site if you have one and on the event schedule on the IMAC National web site. See the next two items. In addition, you should post the Flyer at all the hobby shops in your area.

- Prepare a contest Flyer. This should contain at least the following:

	- Contest date(s) and location
	- A map or directions to the flying field
	- List of what classes will be flying
	- Whether or not there is to be a free style and when it is scheduled.
	- Any deviations from the IMAC Flying and Judging guide that will apply - such things must be noted on your sanction application and must be approved by the Regional Director if this is a regional points contest.
	- Whether or not the contest counts for regional points.
	- What time registration opens
	- What time the pilots meeting will be held
	- If there is to be a raffle.
	- If there is any monetary prize, eg, for the freestyle.
	- If sound testing will occur
	- If there are any field/flight restrictions unique to your field that require definition beyond the IMAC mandated deadline.
	- What food service will be available
	- What camping facilities are available at the field or in the area
	- Contest entry fee
	- Your personal contact info which is typically your email address and/or  phone number.

- The contest entry fee, like most everything else about the contest, is up to you. It is desirable to make the entry fee as low as possible to make it easy for newcomers to try IMAC without a big cost hit. However, this can be a money making opportunity for your club so you may want to maximize your entry fee. You have to decide where you come down between these two competing motivations. In recent years, fees have run between $20 and $50 with most falling in the $25 to $35 range. Whatever your fee, you can offer a lower or zero entry fee to Basic pilots and you are encouraged to do so. We need to attract new pilots and this is one way to do that. There is no problem having a different entry fee for Basic. The decision is yours. In addition, you may offer a discount for IMAC members and you are encouraged to do that. This is common and is usually $5 off the full entry fee.

 

What physical things and equipment you will need:

- A reserved flying field. Make sure the usual inhabitants are notified well in advance that the field will be closed on your contest date. They get really upset if they show up at their flying field on the IMAC weekend and find out that they can’t fly - then they direct their anger at IMAC.

- Some way to clearly mark the "deadline" for the judges. As of the 07 rules the "box" is gone as is the 60 degree line. The deadline is the only thing that IMAC calls for to define our Air Space. You have to make sure it is marked so that the judges easily know where it is.

- Scoring capability. This consists of a laptop, a printer, the current scoring program and supplies such as print cartridges and paper. Since the laptop won’t make it through the weekend on one battery charge, you need 110 power or spare laptop batteries.

- A sufficient quantity of score sheets for the number of pilots you expect in each class. Remember that each pilot needs two (2) score sheets - one for each judge. If the score sheet you choose to use doesn’t provide space for all the sequences you plan to fly, you will need more score sheets You will also need to decide what score sheets will be used for the unknown flight. This can be scored on the same sheets as used for the Knowns or on a separate one.

- Copies of the AMA Safety Declaration form that the pilot has to sign.

- Copies of the AMA Event Participant form that the pilot has to sign in on.

- An IMAC Sign in Sheet that ties to the AMA Event Participant form. It records name, IMAC member number if any, pilot & panel or not, radio frequency, senior or not and entry fee payment.

- Some way to display the flight order at the flight line(s). This is typically a metal stake that is set up at the flight line. Each pilot’s name & class is affixed to a spring type clothes pin. These clothes pins are then clipped to the stake arranged by class and flight order.

- Some way to randomly draw for flight order within class - if you choose to do it this way. Usually the clothes pins just referred to are used for this purpose. Dump them in a hat by class and have the youngest pilot pull them out one at a time. It is not required that flight order be established in this manner. What is required is that the scheme you use to establish initial flight order and to manage it through the weekend, must be fair to all so that the same pilots are not repeatedly the first to fly in a round.

- Trophies for whatever classes you are flying. Typically trophies are awarded to the three highest finishers in each class. If a freestyle is flown, trophies are also needed to cover that - there is often just one trophy for the freestyle winner. In addition, a single trophy for the highest placing Senior at the contest may be given. Some contests/regions may not award a senior trophy at the contest and only award a regional senior trophy at the end of the year. However, it is a nice way to recognize the older guys by having a at least one senior contest trophy.

- Aresti diagrams, both Knowns and Unknowns, for the two judges for each class that is to be flown at the contest. You probably want to put these in plastic protective sheath.

- Unknowns obtained from IMAC national.

- A supply of pencils and or pens for the judges/scribes.

- A set of clipboards - one for each judge/scribe pair for each flight line you will run.

- Chairs for each flight line. This is four chairs for each flight line to provide for two judges and two scribes per flight line.

- If reasonable, a barrier between the judges and the flight line is highly desirable.

- If you expect the contest entry to be large a PA system or bullhorn of some kind is desirable for pilots meetings and simply for getting people’s attention during the contest.

- If you are flying a freestyle you need a sound system to play the contestants music.

- Providing lunch for purchase at the field is pretty much a necessity, so, a food preparation facility and equipment for Sat/Sun lunch and for Sat evening dinner, if any. Food sales are another way to bank some dollars for the club treasury.

- Cash and something to hold it in order to make change when entry fees are paid. You should seed this container with some number of small bills to have for making change. This, of course, you retrieve after the contest.

- Some way to mark off the three ready boxes at each flight line. Water soluble spray paint from Lowes or Home Depot works well. The ready boxes should be located a "reasonable" distance away from the judges and the pilot who is currently flying.

- Raffle stuff if you intend to do a raffle. This includes the “give aways”, the raffle tickets and some container to hold the tickets and draw from.

- Last but not least, you need to provide "the facilities". If your flying field doesn't have toilets or if they are very primitive, you need to rent Porta-Potties. This last item is critical if you expect wives, children and or spectators to attend.

 

What personnel you will need:

What people you utilize all depends on you, how you organize things and how big the entry is. The following describes tasks rather than people. So, some individuals can do more than one of the jobs called for. What tasks are necessary and which are optional, is noted.

- (required) CD - You are the CD and are the final arbiter of any disputes. You must be an AMA certified CD.

- (required) Registrar - To sign in contestants and obtain all required information, to make sure the three registration forms (AMA Safety Declaration, AMA Event Participant and the IMAC Sign in Sheet) are signed and to collect entry fees.

- (required) Judging matrix manager - This person should know the cast of characters so he does not put a person in "over his head". He creates and adjusts, as necessary, the judging matrix through the weekend and posts it in some obvious place at the field. He should also let affected people know directly if he has to change previously announced assignments.

-  (optional) Impound Manager - This person(s) handles the transmitter impound if you decide to have one.

- (required) Scorer - This is really a two person job as the data entry needs to be checked thoroughly and this is better done with two people. This person(s) must be trained on the use of the current scoring program. The scorer(s) enters the pilot's scores into the scoring program as they are received from the flight line. On Saturday, the scorer will print and post the standings after each round is completed. Typically round scores are not posted on Sunday. Scoring has proved to be the most problematic of all the areas involved in running a contest. You must line up dependable people to do this and they need to have some familiarity with computers. They must also be willing to put in some time before the contest weekend to run a test contest on the score program and learn it. If they do not do this it is almost certain that scoring of your contest will be mucked up somehow.

- (optional) Runners - These people get each pilots scores from the judges after completion of each flight and bring them to the scorer. If you don't have identified runners, getting the completed score sheets from the judges to the scorer becomes pretty haphazard but it seems to get done somehow. The key thing is that the pilots themselves should not handle the score sheets after they are completed by the judges and before they are entered into the computer.

- (required) Judges - Two per flight line per class drawn from the contestants or other qualified people who may be at the contest as assistants, callers or spectators.

- (optional) Scribes - One per judge per class drawn from contestants and/or spectators. This is really not “optional”. Without a scribe the judges attention will be drawn away from the plane while he is writing the score for the previous maneuver. This is not good. Use spectators and Basic pilots as scribes and do your utmost to have them available for the judges. Best case is to actually make scribe assignments in the manner that you make judging assignments, i.e., a scribing matrix.

- (optional but highly desirable) Flight Line Manager - One such person is required per active flight line. He assures that the three ready boxes are filled with planes and that their pilots are ready to fly. If you choose to enforce IMAC time constraints such as a maximum of two minutes to start and get into the air, the flight line guy is the one who does it.

- (optional) Raffle Manager - This person is responsible for obtaining the “give aways”, hopefully for free, and for selling tickets if you intend that they be sold.

- (optional - but not really) Food Manager - This person runs the food prep and delivery operation. There are usually several people involved in food prep and delivery.

- (optional) Photographer - This person will take digital shots of the contest through the weekend and be responsible for getting them posted to the photo gallery on the National web site.

 

What are the norms for the weekend:

- Number of flights - A typical weekend contest will consist of three rounds of Knowns and one flight of an Unknown. However, given good weather and decent organization, you should be able to fly at least four flights (eight sequences) of Knowns and one flight (one sequence) of Unknowns. With good organization and time management, an entry of thirty or less and a timely start each day you can easily get in the fourth round of Knowns and still wrap up by mid afternoon on Sunday.

- Judging - Best case is to have a pilot judge classes lower than he is flying in. Also, first degree blood relatives should not judge each another, e.g., no parents, children, siblings, etc... should judge one another.

- Judging Instruction - The quality of judging is crucial to the health of our sport so please consider holding a judging seminar of one to two hours as part of the contest. This can be held on Friday night before the contest. If this doesn’t work for you, consider taking 15 min (max) at each pilots meeting to cover one aspect of judging, e.g., cover spins or snaps.

- Safety - Know what makes a safe contest and be very hard nosed in enforcement. The “dead line” must be strictly enforced and zeros given for penetration of the deadline on any maneuver. These planes and motors that we play with can maim and kill. Please review IMAC and AMA safety practices and requirements and enforce these at your contest.

- Air Space definition - As noted above the "deadline" is the only definition required by IMAC to delineate the Air Space. This must be 100' out from the pilot station(s). If you have over flight issues or neighbor issues at your field that require you to further restrict the Air Space for the contest, it is up to you to define the limits, to mark them so they may be recognized, to decide how you will recognize infringement and, finally, to decide what the penalty will be for infringement. If such conditions exist they should be noted in the contest Flyer and covered at the pilot's meeting on Saturday.

- Food - The availability at the field of lunch for purchase on both Sat and Sun is pretty much the norm. This can be box lunches or burgers off the grill. Anything beyond that, such as a dinner for participants on Saturday evening, is optional and unusual. Selling food is a money making opportunity for you and your club.

 

What are the financials:

- As noted, the entry fee amount you charge the participants is up to you. Every effort should be made to keep it as low as possible while still allowing you to make some money for your club. Costs that must be covered by the entry fee are:

            - AMA sanction fee at $20

- Document duplication costs if any, e.g., score sheets, Aresti diagrams, etc...

            - Field rental if any

            - Trophies

            - Fee to the IMAC region at $3 per paying entrant, eg, if you offer free entry for Basic pilots, or first time Basic pilots they have not paid so you need not send IMAC a $3 fee for those that flew for free.

            - Equipment rental fees if any, e.g., sound system, Porta-Potties, etc...

 

What must get done on Friday:

Prepare the field. Mark off as best you can the field boundaries or identify what natural markers you will use to describe the boundaries to the pilots. Field extremities can be delineated by natural markers, e.g., trees, houses etc... but the deadline must be clearly defined and recognizable by the judges. If there is no natural boundary, such as a fence or a shrub line to delineate the deadline you must install some markers that make it clear.   - Mark the deadline. It must be 100 feet out from the pilot stations.   - Set up flight line(s) position(s) for pilot/caller and judges/scribes.   - Mark off the three ready boxes per flight line

- Prepare for and run the judging seminar, if any. You will need:   - A place to hold it where people can sit. This can be on the ground.   - A presenter   - Any materials or equipment the presenter requires, e.g., a screen for chart projection.      - Early registration. If you have a lot of "out of towners" they will be on site on Friday night and your registrar can sign them up to minimize delays on Sat morning.       - Judging matrix. Given pre-registration or a significant early registration on Friday night, you can make a good start on the judging matrix on Friday night. Again, the objective is to minimize delays and workload for Sat morning.

What must get done on Saturday morning:

- Register all entrants (AMA Safety Declaration, AMA Event Participant form and the IMAC Sign In Sheet"). Registration typically "opens" at 7:00 am.

- Collect entry fees

- Identify frequency conflicts and decide how you will handle them. This can be with a general impound (all radios), a partial impound (only for conflicted freq) or, if the number of conflicts is small, let the pilots manage it themselves. But is your responsibility to make sure that all “conflicted freq” pilots know that they are sharing.

- Build a judging matrix and post it.

- Hold a pilots meeting. Your meeting must touch on the following:   - Safety issues and practices, both AMA and IMAC   - Air space definition and field boundaries.   - Identification of frequency conflicts and how to handle them.   - Flight order (number of flight lines, classes on each flight line and pilot order within class) and indicate how that will be modified through the weekend, e.g., initial flight order will move up three for each subsequent round.   - Flight line management   - Rules or exceptions unique to your field or your contest.   - The judging matrix.   - Judging instruction, if any.   - Declaration of  field availability or not for open flying after sequence flying completes on Sat and Sun and before sequence flying starts on Sun morning.   - Review the target schedule for the day.

What must get done on Saturday afternoon & evening:

- Post scores and standings after each round

- Distribute the unknowns

- Run the event dinner, if any

 

What must get done on Sunday morning:

- Hold a pilots meeting. This is a cut down version of Saturday’s meeting and should cover any issues or changes that resulted from Saturday’s flying as well as reviewing the target schedule for Sunday. Also, if there are any questions or disputes about Unknown interpretation, they must be resolved at this meeting and the final interpretation made clear so that judges and pilots all have a common understanding about what is to be flown.

 

What must get done on Sunday afternoon after sequence flying completes:

- Run the Free Style if any. Note some contests prefer to run the Free Style on Saturday afternoon or, alternatively, have one round of Freestyle each day. Its up to you.

- Review scoring, check for errors and finalize the standings

- Prepare trophies for presentation.

- Run the trophy presentation.

- Run the raffle drawing and give away the “give aways” if there is a raffle.

- Thank all who assisted - particularly the scorers.

 

What needs to get done after it is all over:

- Pay outstanding local bills.

- Send IMAC money to IMAC National.

- Following the instructions on how to submit event results, send scores to the national webmaster (webmaster@mini-iac.org).

- Send the Contest Director Report to the AMA. Attach to the report the final standings, by class.

- Get the field cleaned up.

- Get contest pictures regional iReporter.

 

Miscellaneous Suggestions & equipment availability:

- Adopt the three plane ready box approach and enforce its use.

- In order to minimize wasted time between pilots, require that the next pilot to fly take off when the current pilot is half way through his second sequence. This pilot then idles out of the way until the current pilot completes his flight whereupon he enters and begins his sequence. This “next” pilot need not wait for the previous guy to land before entering the box provided the judges are ready.

- Enforce the IMAC time limits for starting/take off, box entry and landing.

- Limit the number of turn around passes before box entry once the judges declare themselves ready. A max of two passes is liberal.

- Forms that you will need and where they can be obtained:

            - AMA Safety Declaration form - AMA web site

            - AMA Event Participant form - AMA web site

            - IMAC Sign In Sheet - make it up

            - Unknown request form - IMAC National web site

            - Score sheets - make them up

            - Known Aresti diagrams - IMAC National web site

            - AMA Contest Director Report form - AMA web site

            - Submittal letter to send Regional share of entry fee to IMAC National - make it up

- Some regions may have “regional equipment” that you will require for running the contest, e.g., laptop, printer, pilot pins, stakes for pilot pins, etc, etc... Check with your Regional Director to see if your region has anything of use. If not, you have to come up with it.