US Team Selection Program points system, was mounting wingposts

From: Steve Brown <rtxc_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:22:21 -0000

The program operates on a two calendar-year cycle ending with the
Team Finals. A flyer may enter the program at any time during the
cycle by entering one or more "Regional" contests.

The notion of a Regional is a holdover from a time when there were
too many F1d flyers and some method was was needed to winnow down the
field before the Team Finals. That led to a requirement that all
qualifiers must obtain 75+ regional points to fly in the Finals. At
one time there were also "Local" qualifying contests (10 point scale)
which were factored into this system, but these were eliminated in
the early 1980's.

The purpose of the points system was to identify F1d flyers who were
consistently superior, i.e., in more than one contest. And it may
have been intended to normalize results from various geographic
areas, so that flyers who had consistent access to the best sites
didn't have an automatic advantage over those with access to, say,
only a Cat. II site.

The rationale seemed to be a desire to avoid a situation in which a
flyer did really well at only one contest, the Team Finals, and who
would then make the team in place of a flyer with a more consistent
record. The points system was controversial in the 70's and early
80's.

For example, from memory, in the 1971 program, I believe there were
53 flyers who qualified by obtaining 75 regional points plus local
points. That implies that there were more than 53 F1d flyers who
participated in the cycle. Probably only half of them attended the
Finals, but this provides a comparison to today when we had 23 flyers
qualify and 14 actually compete in the Finals.

As participation has declined the idea of eliminating the Regional
requirement has been raised, but the consensus seems to be that
requiring program participants to fly in at least one Regional
stimulates contest activity.
Received on Sun Jul 15 2007 - 07:22:53 CEST