Sun 'N Fun
2006 Award

This year we recieved a "Outstanding Aircraft" award at the show.

This award was a bit odd as in, I've no idea where it placed in the placement of placing lol.

This is the 3rd at Sun 'N Fun that the awards didn't stack up and it looks like it will be the last at least for us so far as being in the Award Competitions.

The "Best Helicopter Award" went to a fellow with a Rotorway 162F Pro SF named Robert B. Summers.

From what I gather there were two of these Outstanding Aircraft awards handed out, One to Donna and I and the other one to a fellow named Paul Pudela who had a 98 Rotorway 162F.  We're assuming that best helicopter is the top of the chain and that the Outstanding awards are on lower end of the scale.  I was told that there is some sort of a system in place that uses a points system.

Translated to me that adds up to the fact that our ship as well as the other two or more didn't amass enough points to receive the "Grand Champ Award" nor the "Reserve Grand Champ Award. Last year our ship obtained the only award handed out at the show which we personally feel kinda sucks.  There were plenty of other ships there that belonged to people who not only busted their humps building their ships and went through the same sacrifices we did just to get them to Florida and for some unexplained reason didn't qualify for an award.

In short now with the what I believe to be new catagory of Outstanding Aircraft Awards, leaves 3 Award positions unnecessarily unfilled which at least in my eyes is nothing but wrong.  The reason I feel this way is, using our own ship for example, our ship has already won the Reserve Grand Champ Award as well as the Best Helicopter Award and now all of a sudden it doesn't add up enough points.  We do understand as far as our ship goes that it can not receive the same award more then once and that it doesn't have a pretty paint scheme which  for some stupid reason automatically knocks it out of the Grand Champion position .  I never saw Paul Pudela's Helicopter to have an opinion on it but the one that belonged to Robert Summers "body innovations and paint wise" was as good as it gets and all it qualified for was Best Helicopter?   As far as our ship goes and we're not trying to sound like were tooting our own horn here but we feel our ship build wise is the without a doubt in the top 4 RotorWays or better we have ever seen to date so we just don't get it. This isn't a new can of worms we just opened here. Back in 2003 a ship amased a certain amount of points in the judging and before it was all said and done somehow someone manipulated the numbers which ofcorse changed the outcome of the event and that's when we all started paying attention to what was going on so this is far from a new happening.

I don't know about the rest of you but we can't see

# 1 making the dollar investment we do,
#2  taking the major risk we do in transporting our ship
# 3  taking the risk we do flying our ships during the show

Until something changes for the better so far as the judging situation goes thats fair and allows all the raindeers to play in the game we're not going to enter our ship any more.

We're sorry but feeling as we do we can't help but advise other folks to do the same.

The sad part of this is if we all don't bring and enter our ships in the competitions there won't be a much of an airshow for people to see and that in itself is just wrong so lets hope they

"Get Er Done" and "GET IT FIXED"

before next year so that doen't happen to anyone anymore.


END