Originally Posted by rdwoebke

If the system http://www.f3k.us/page2.html is implimented in 2010 I bet more contests will sign up to be a qual event and that would probably lead to more participation in the process. That I think is a good thing.



Ryan

That is exactly the idea - to get more participation!
Tom

Originally Posted by rdwoebke

I think it will work. I also put together a for funsys ranking using the data I mined. I'm debating if I should post that here or not.

Oh I think you should! Could be fun!

James

Allright. As a disclaimer I have not been authorized by anyone to do this analysis. I did this of my own free will and there well could be errors in my data. I learned that the BASS contest apparently had a day rained out so I changed it to a single day contest in my analysis. Here is Ryan's hand launch ranking:

Bruce Davidson 333.0
Oleg Golovidov 287.0
Jeff Carr 284.0
Phil Barnes 247.0
Michael Seid 164.0
Frank Dumas 161.0
David Klein 159.0
Jun Catacutan 134.0
Gerald Taylor 128.0
Joe Wurts 98.0
Scott Zastoupil 98.0
James Hohensee 94.0
Chris Lee 91.0
Nathan Miller 90.0
Dick Proseus 84.0
Arend Borst 82.0
Todd Griffen 82.0
George Morris 73.0
Sean Porter 62.0
Kevin Brotherway 57.0
Adam Weston 55.0
Larry Jolly 53.0
Aradhana Singh Khalsa 51.0
Charlie Morris 51.0
Buddy Roos 50.0
Gary Jenson 48.0
Shane Spickler 45.0
Steve Meyer 42.0
John Kappus 36.0
Jim Schoon 32.0
Ivan MacKenzie 29.0
Doug Pike 28.0
Troy Lawicki 14.5
Craig Robinson 12.0
Phil Abatelli 10.0
Lex M 9.0

Once again, I took only the data that would have qualified somebody for the team selection event (were there to have been one) according to the rules here: http://www.f3k.us/page2.html. This meant that if you came in 11th at Polecat your Polecat score did not figure into my rankings. All 13 of the contests listed at f3k.us could have counted. I also ran this analysis with using just the best 4 scores and that did not really change things. The order of the top 5 in my ranking system was the same either way.

For those still reading along and who have not yet started to type a nasty reply to me , here is my ranking logic:

Score is 2 parts. Part A is # of pilots - your place +1. So Bruce for IHLGF got 60 - 1 + 1 or 60. Part B is you get a bonus for being on the "podium". It works out that if you win the contest you get an additional A score. If you come in 2nd you get .6 of # of contestants and 3rd gets you .4 of the # of contestants. If the contest was a 1 day contest I took the results and multiplied it by .5.

My ranking system makes a few assumptions which I really have no way of knowing if they are correct or not since I have never even came in the top 10 of a contest like IHLGF. First is my ranking system only takes into account the final placing. Second is my ranking does not even look at the scores. It only looks at your placing and the # of pilots. Third it basically assumes it is twice as valuable/important to win IHLGF or Polecat (~60 pilots) than say a Blueskies or that February Florida contest (~30 pilots). I have no idea if this is a correct assumption because I have never even came close to winning a trophy at a hand launch contest that size. Fourth is it gives a bunch of extra weight to winning a contest and then additional extra weight for coming in 2nd or 3rd. Since who wins the contest is often of very big discussion here on rcgroups I thought that was important to put into my ranking system.

Please don't flame me.


Ryan

Very cool Ryan,
I would love to see the results updated with all of the contests from this year. Bruce and I have discussed the same thing a few times. Since F3K.us has not been updated in a many months, there are a bunch of contest missing from the analysis. I know you did your best to fill in the blanks my mining the internet, there are many top west coast pilots missing from the ranking. the Morris brothers have won many events here on the west coast, and I don't know how much of the Blue Sky series or the Eldorado contest scores you were able to find and enter.

Great Job, It is pretty cool to see it all come together.

We (North California) DLG gang usually host 7~9 monthly contest a year.
The size of our contest various from 10 ~ 36 pilots, usually got 15 ~ 19 pilots attend.
Here is the list of contest of this year: http://bayrc.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=5231

Unfortunately, we don't have an AMA club nor the flying field to make our contests count for the team ranking score...

-Kai

Originally Posted by djklein21

I know you did your best to fill in the blanks my mining the internet, there are many top west coast pilots missing from the ranking. the Morris brothers have won many events here on the west coast, and I don't know how much of the Blue Sky series or the Eldorado contest scores you were able to find and enter.

I was able to find results for every contest on f3K.us front page. The listing is:

San Felasco HL - Florida
El Dorado SF Local - California - 1 day only
Blue Skies over Arizona - Arizona
IHLGF 2009 - California
MVSA Handlaunch Classic - Missouri
Blue Skies New Mexico - New Mexico
NWSS HL Contest - Oregon - 2 one day contests with 6 pilots but the same guy won both days
BASS HL Festival - Maryland - one day contest would have been 2 one days but day 2 got rained out
Polecat Challenge 2009 - Pennslyvania
Long Island HL Classic - New York - 2 1 day contests
AMA Nats 2009 - Indiana
ECHLGF 2009 - North Carolina
The Bruce Davidson Challenge “The Bruce” - Kentucky

The only Blue Skies event that did not get counted in my system (this contest is not on the list on f3k.us) was the Colorado event. If more of the El Dorado contests should be counted I can add that to the analysis. On the f3k.us website the El Dorado SF Local gives a link that goes to a thread that discusses one specific contest. I had assumed that was the only one registered. Charlie and George Morris are both in the ranking and both would have qualified for a team selection event (were there to have been one in 09). Charlie was 3rd at Blue Skies over Arizona (25 pilots) and George was 5th at IHLGF. Both were also in the top 5 (21 pilots) at Blue Skies over Arizona.

5 of the contests on the list were "western US" contests and 8 were eastern, so perhaps the list is a bit eastern biased. But I did not make the list I just used that website as a baseline for some analysis.

Originally Posted by djklein21

Great Job, It is pretty cool to see it all come together.

Thanks. And thanks for not flaming me.

Originally Posted by Kai@UCSB

We (North California) DLG gang usually host 7~9 monthly contest a year.

If those contests should have been on the f3k.us website but for whatever reason were not added I'll gladly add them to my analysis. Perhaps one of the admins of f3k.us could confirm? My understanding is any F3K rules following AMA sanctioned contest could be submitted to f3k.us but the CD did have to go to f3k.us and fill out a form.

Originally Posted by Kai@UCSB

Unfortunately, we don't have an AMA club nor the flying field to make our contests count for the team ranking score...

How do you have contests without a field to fly from? If you have that many interested pilots you can easily form an AMA club. All you need is 5 AMA members and each member to chip in ~$10.00 towards the AMA club charter fees. Then you have an AMA club and having a club makes the cost of sanctioning contests a little bit cheaper. It costs $20 to sanction a contest or $25 if the CD is not part of a club.

Ryan

Yep, Yep and Yep.

Again, great job.

BTW Kai, I have to add that adding the Nor Cal scores would only put Bob on the map since he cleaned you guys out almost every single contest this year (even while flying a mimi, you suck). Well except for this last weekend, and except for...... great job Kai, it was great to see you unseat the old man this weekend.

Originally Posted by rdwoebke

How do you have contests without a field to fly from? If you have that many interested pilots you can easily form an AMA club. All you need is 5 AMA members and each member to chip in ~$10.00 towards the AMA club charter fees. Then you have an AMA club and having a club makes the cost of sanctioning contests a little bit cheaper. It costs $20 to sanction a contest or $25 if the CD is not part of a club.

It is not easy to find a good flying field to host contest in Bay Area. Although we have two AMA soaring clubs, SBSS and DVSS, non of them have a good flying field. By the way, a lot of our DLG pilots are the members of BOTH of these two clubs...

SBSS doesn't have an official flying field and only allow to fly in a local school on Sunday (refer: http://sbss.org/). DVSS only has a very small flying field with a lot of no-fly-zone (no matter how high the planes are, the owners of the building will shut the club down if we do that). The ground is covered by rocks and asphalt. Non of the field are DLG nor competition friendly. Imagining flying in a contest with half of the sky is no-fly-zone...

What we do is to fly in a local high school on Sunday. Saturday is usually full of soccer kids... The school is "ok" for us to fly as long as it is not an "event" kind of thing. That's probably the best we can do. Trust me, we did a lot to try to get a club or a flying field.

-Kai

Originally Posted by Kai@UCSB

The school is "ok" for us to fly as long as it is not an "event" kind of thing.

10-30 pilots is not an event? Seems to me like that is an event.

If you felt the need to you could easily sanction those things through one of your existing clubs. They would not have to be any more of an event than they are now, other than a person becoming an AMA CD and sending in some paperwork and $20.

Obviously you guys are having a lot of success the way you are doing things but I feel a need to try to be over informative on the interweb.

Ryan

Originally Posted by djklein21

I have to add that adding the Nor Cal scores would only put Bob on the map since he cleaned you guys out almost every single contest this year

Not true not true

http://bayrc.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=5231
Here is the 1st list:
Feb: Greg
March: Kai
May: Bob
June: Bob
July: Bob
Sept: Bob
Oct: Kai

He only cleans half+ of them

Great Work Ryan!

Now I can go to Red and say that I beat him finally!

My only real opinion is that I think this is kind of a bad system for really ranking an individual against their peers. It seems a bit biased towards the individuals that went to a bunch of contests rather then who beat who. Don't get me wrong, the individuals that are on top are great pilots but I know that on any given day, Red is probably going to beat me but because I did well at more recorded contest then he did, I am ranked higher. It doesnt add up in my book.

Originally Posted by hohensej

Now I can go to Red and say that I beat him finally!

He had oppertunity to move ahead of you. I invited him to stay at my place and use one of my cars for The Bruce.

Originally Posted by hohensej

My only real opinion is that I think this is kind of a bad system for really ranking an individual against their peers. It seems a bit biased towards the individuals that went to a bunch of contests rather then who beat who.

It is an imprfect system for sure. Is there a better solution for the ranking? I'm sure there is and I'm looking forward to seeing somebody post that.
It would be interesting to see somebody with expertise in competitive ranking systems to throw this data into such a system. Probably would need individual scores or even round scores for that and that was way more effort than I wanted to put into it.

My system tries to reward winning or at least placing in the top 3 at really big contests. It is a little more than just biased towards individuals that go to a bunch of contests but to be ranked high does require attending a few contests. A person could have just went to Polecat and IHLGF and if that person won both contests then he would be in the top 5 in the ranking.

Editorial: Maybe the issue of how many contests a person has to go to to prove how good he is shows the importance of having a good team selection. Let pilots qualify by placing in the top 10 at big contests or winning smaller 2 day contests and then compete head to head in a 3 day contest with a full flyoff day for the top 10. This way pilots only really need to travel a far distance to one contest in the season.

Ryan

Originally Posted by djklein21

Very cool Ryan,
I would love to see the results updated with all of the contests from this year. Bruce and I have discussed the same thing a few times. Since F3K.us has not been updated in a many months, there are a bunch of contest missing from the analysis. I know you did your best to fill in the blanks my mining the internet, there are many top west coast pilots missing from the ranking. the Morris brothers have won many events here on the west coast, and I don't know how much of the Blue Sky series or the Eldorado contest scores you were able to find and enter.

Great Job, It is pretty cool to see it all come together.

I really suck guys... Im am at an all time low in rc groups participation, and even worse completely sucking wind in my f3k duties. Althought Im very proud to have had something to do with the concept and site, I think its time to get it more open source. My work load looks like it will be solid until the end of the year. I just took on two additional huge projects. Please give me some suggestions as to how we can make the site better by way of updating, and maybe some volunteers to work with me on it.

I think we need to understand the theme of the ranking system is not to determine empirically the best pilot. Its not clear up any debates about who is the best. I love this ranking system because its PARTICIPATION and consistancy that is important. Joe W may be my best friend (and the best pilot), but hes not getting ranked number 1 by showing up to one contest. And neither would tiger.

On that note, here is my challenge: bunk to any of you crossover pilots that think you are going to show up to one contest next year, and dust off your only 1.5 meter plane and make the f3k team because you think you deserve it. You need to earn it. You are out of practice, and out of sync and youll get your butts kicked. I know several guys you dont know that will kick your butts all accross the field next year-some of them wear bandanas. You may be unbelievable, but if you are not training by going to contests and getting sharp with the task strategy and decision making, you are hurting your chances. Youre also getting old, and that weak arm is getting weaker. If you are not consistantly over 200 feet you are at a disadvantage and I cant see living with that on a US team. So, in this off season, show some backbone, and prioritize your contest schedules for next year now. I want to see a US team dominate in Sweden, but I want more sportsman, more beginners and novices getting turned on by what they see. Get your heads on this winter, get your zone foils graphed. Throw out your antique boom and pod designs. Show up with a friend, and both get better. Take next year and make sure you support whats been happening with US handlaunch. Put flag on your wingtip.

Now, I need an intern to help get these scores updated, and solidify this system for next year. Volunteers?

By the way Ryan,

You put together a hell of good contest list. Looks about right to me for an invite list based on who I saw at contests last year. From there I think we could field a good team.

Anyone not there that thinks they should be? Show up next year, and lets make sure we have the best team.