Parowan, Thinking Outside the Box - An Opportunity Knocks!

I'm thinking the more you promote super-regionals the more you will
turn Nationals into super-regionals as well. East coast pilots will go
to the east coast super-regional when the nationals are in the west
and vice-versa. Maybe this is okay because for the most part only
pilots who are really gunning for a spot on the world team will make
the cross-country trek most years.

Already happening. I counted less than 3 pilots crossed the
mississippi for 15 meter nationals in the last two years. Why bother
when you can fly sports or 18, or a few good regionals, and standard
pilots can fly sports/15/18?

In general, this is good. Pilots seem happy with the racing
opportunities near home and don't need to waste a week driving for 10
days of flying. The biggest negative effect I can see is that teams
are selected from a very small group willing to spend a week driving
across the country. And of course it's not quite as fun to fly in the
"wrong" class.

What to do? East and west nationals, mixing classes with handicaps?
(Other countries handicap their nationals to have larger contests.)
Pick team slots from performance in other classes, not just "your"
class? (Get a good seeding list, then just go down the list and ask
what class they want to fly?) More fun ideas?

But if the innocuous super-regionals caused such a ruckus, just
imagine the explosion if we try to change the structure of nationals
-- where seeding points and team status is at stake!

John Cochrane