2025 Contest Season in Full Swing

As I write this we are about halfway through our 2025 contest season, I’ve just celebrated another awesome Aerobatics Day, and I’ve been doing some flying of my own lately, which is always invigorating. What a great time to be an aerobatic pilot or IAC volunteer!

I looked at the table of contents for this issue and HOLY COW it is a good one.

Make This Sport as Easy as Possible

I love talking about aerobatics with other pilots so I always relish the opportunity to offer critique and coaching, especially to people who are working their way up to the Advanced or Unlimited categories. Every time we teach, we learn as well.

At a recent coaching gig, I was reminded how hard this sport is. Frankly, without a coach, it may be beyond hard; it may be impossible. Every learner has a different set of patterns to overcome, and everyone responds to a different way of teaching. If you don’t have a coach who can help you grow, then you are faced with the impossible task of teaching yourself.

One of the things a coach can help you with, is finding ways to make this sport as easy as possible. That’s fundamentally the job of a coach, to make the complex simple and the challenging easy: to remove all the guesswork, to demonstrate proper form, to develop skills, to present drills, and to provide a supportive voice when the going gets tough.

When approaching a new figure, first ask yourself: can I do all the pieces? No? First, do everything in isolation, then in combination.

Work on the spin until you can enter and exit cleanly. The exit should be on a perfect vertical line. Then add the snap. Don’t try to pull around for the entire P loop after the outside snap roll. Instead, just pull level.

Next, look at the ¾ positive snap. What airspeed would you like to be at for that, so you can make the snap pretty and precise? For me, I like to be at about 110 to 120 knots. So why not practice that snap roll on an inverted level line a few times and figure out what speed range works best for you and your aircraft? Then, how about pulling from level through a half loop until you know what airspeed you need to be at the bottom, and what pull you need to be at the top at the airspeed you want for the snap? Then, add the snap.

Now that you know what airspeed you want to be at the bottom of the P loop, start pulling to level from a vertical downline and see what speed you need to start the pull at to be at that speed on the bottom.

Once you have all of these elements together, and you know exactly how to fly each piece, put them in combination. With this approach you will be building one success on another. You might find your first attempt at the full figure goes just great!

Always strive to make your aerobatic life as easy as possible. Biting off more than you are ready for is a good way to get discouraged or even injured. There are no bonus points for being tough.

This advice applies to every single figure. Having trouble with rollers? Make them bigger and focus on the roll rate instead of trying to get everything perfect and tight right away. Are your rolls leaving you off heading? Slow down the roll rate and pay attention to find out when that first stops happening, then go back to that attitude and explore all the control pressures to figure out where you are going wrong. Greying out at the bottom of a figure? Try to find a way to fly it slower.

Non-Flying Awards

This year’s recipients of our Non-Flying Awards, which are given to our greatest volunteers, are:

• Lorrie Penner: Kathy Jaffe Award for outstanding volunteer
• Alice Johnson: Frank Price Cup for greatest overall contribution to the sport of aerobatics
• Tom Meyers: Harold Neumann Award for outstanding contribution as a chief judge
• Dave Watson: Robert L. Heuer Award for judging excellence

Congrats to all four deserving people!

Unfortunately, there was no one nominated for the Curtis Pitts Memorial Trophy, awarded for “outstanding contribution to aerobatics through product design.” I can think of a couple worthy recipients from this issue alone!

It’s never too early to nominate someone for next year! To make a nomination, go to iac.org and click on “Celebrate” then “Awards & Trophies” and then click on “Annual Non-Flying Awards”. The nomination link is at the bottom of that page.

Article Swap

This month we are trying something new with our magazine content: we are publishing an article from a sister aerosport group: our friends at the Academy of Model Aeronautics. I thought it would be really neat to hear from them and see what they are up to, so I reached out to them to see if we could each share some content in each other’s publications. An upcoming issue of their Model Aviation magazine will include an article about the IAC perspective on competition.

Assuming this goes well, we will do the same thing with some other aerosports.

The idea is just to connect all of us a little bit with our friends in other aviation circles.

Estate Planning

I’ve been wanting to say something about this for a while, but it never seems like the right time, so darn it I’m just going to say it.

You are going to die. Because we all are. Whether you fly aerobatics or not, your time will eventually come. Every day of your life there is a small chance that it will be your last.

While aviation accidents are rare, they still happen several times a year, and we can’t predict whose number will come up. It could be yours. There is nothing you can do to ease the pain your passing will bring to the people close to you, no matter how you go, but a sudden accident adds a lot of confusion and disarray to the emotional hardship. Accidents come out of the blue. They pull the rug out from under everyone around you. They are financially devastating to families at a time when they are least able to handle the burden.

Anything you can do to prepare for your passing is a tremendous blessing to the people you’ve left behind.

If you haven’t talked to an attorney about how to go about that, please do. And have a talk with the people who love you about how important it is that they enjoy a happy life with you when you are gone. Give them permission now to take care of themselves when the inevitable happens.

Airventure and Nationals

By the time you read this, Airventure will be behind us and Nationals will be coming fast. I hope to meet you at one or both events. If you mention the secret word (it’s “haberdashery”) I’ll know you read my column. Email me at president@iac.org.