what to do with the impba internats

[RonShaw]

40 outboard as well...

And the largest tunnel class, B Sport Tunnel.
20 Sport Tunnel

20 Tunnel

40 Tunnel

Open Tunnel

4 classes of each style would be a great number of nitro classes. That way all classes are offered and treated the same.

 

[sbowden21]

Marty and Mark,

I am with you guys on all of this, my first Big One was Huntsville 1983 Dayum that was fun!!! A central location is great I'm willing to travel and explore. Getting the clubs together to sponser just for the basic setup work for such an event seems to be the big problem I see? You have a twenty member club with three workers?? And 17 Supervisors?? I don't think it's so much sponsorship or raffle contributions that make the event work it just needs a well planned itinerary and schedule of events that will attract the overall competitive crowd. I know costs are a large problem for everyone the lasts Nationals I attended was NAMBA Nats in Nh. back in 2005. What would be a central location for EVERYONE?? St. Louis maybe?? Then it could just be a National Association run show with outside ground work and local clubs Officiating?

Later!!

Pat

I wish could find a good lake in a good location around st Louis area not much luck on that lol.... Mount Vernon Illinois has a decent lake with tons of room for camping, set up, pits etc....

 

[Chris Wood]

sam what happened to the lake in the park over in the hood?

 

[Chris Wood]

Back in the day when Nitro was popular it probably didn't matter where you held the event, you would get plenty of support from the host district and surrounding districts plus the core group that will travel anywhere.

Now it's completely different, if you don't place the event in an area that still supports nitro you have to rely on that core group to fill the void and that group has been shrinking for a long time

People bring up how well a couple events a year are attended and think nitro is healthy but it's not.At the club level which is the heart of our hobby it's all but dead with a very few exceptions.

Cutting classes would definitely raise the quality of racing for those still interested in Nitro but I don't think that will change the inevitable future.

tim i don't doubt that nitro is down. but if we don't make a consious effort to do something then yes it will be dead. gas is nice. but other than the price of the fuel you burn. it ain't any cheaper.. now the eas at which you can run. ya.. you can spend a grand on the cmb motor.. a 100 bucks at your local weed wacker yard and get going.

what needs to happen honestly.. is the board on the impba needs to really open it's eyes i think to some new ideas and ways to make this grow.

i know for one personally i won't run gas. just not for me. no matter what the draw is.

i have nothing against gas, it is great there is some form of boating that is doing some what well.. but lets face it.. the real issue is just boating in general is down.. more so than ever.. and to fix that we need to look at locations to run

 

[Tim Kish]

Back in the day when Nitro was popular it probably didn't matter where you held the event, you would get plenty of support from the host district and surrounding districts plus the core group that will travel anywhere.

Now it's completely different, if you don't place the event in an area that still supports nitro you have to rely on that core group to fill the void and that group has been shrinking for a long time

People bring up how well a couple events a year are attended and think nitro is healthy but it's not.At the club level which is the heart of our hobby it's all but dead with a very few exceptions.

Cutting classes would definitely raise the quality of racing for those still interested in Nitro but I don't think that will change the inevitable future.

tim i don't doubt that nitro is down. but if we don't make a consious effort to do something then yes it will be dead. gas is nice. but other than the price of the fuel you burn. it ain't any cheaper.. now the eas at which you can run. ya.. you can spend a grand on the cmb motor.. a 100 bucks at your local weed wacker yard and get going.

what needs to happen honestly.. is the board on the impba needs to really open it's eyes i think to some new ideas and ways to make this grow.

i know for one personally i won't run gas. just not for me. no matter what the draw is.

i have nothing against gas, it is great there is some form of boating that is doing some what well.. but lets face it.. the real issue is just boating in general is down.. more so than ever.. and to fix that we need to look at locations to run

I'm with you Chris, I've tried gas and it just doesn't excite me,that's why I'm pretty much done, unfortunately for nitro this should have been looked at fifteen years ago.

As for the hobby being down, I believe the Gas Nats sold out in a few hours.

Smaller number of classes will definitely help that's for sue.

 

[Tim Kish]

There has also been very little new blood in Nitro for a long time, yet I see new faces running gas every year.It sucks if you love nitro but it's the simple truth.

I wonder if the tether boat guys felt the same when radios became popular

 

[sbowden21]

sam what happened to the lake in the park over in the hood?

lololol

:lol: I don't go there ever but some of the guys around here still do

 

[sbowden21]

sam what happened to the lake in the park over in the hood?

St Louis club had the Nats in 1993 same park over 500 boats I do believe....

 

[Ron B.]

I like some of the idea's like having it every 2 or 3 years and maybe have regional qualifiers in the off years for people to qualify: Example: (Southeast in GA, Northeast in VA or MD, Central in IN, MI or OH, Southwest in LA, OK or TX, Canada could have one somewhere and any where else that there is interest. Its not perfect idea but we need to do something to get this going again!

 

[Tom Kelly]

First....I would like to thank Chris for starting this topic. There have been some good points expressed so far, and I would like to comment on them.

Too Many Nats........There are currently (4) races approved to use the word "Nats" or "Nationals" in their race title. We would like to keep it at four as to not degrade the integrity of it's use.

Too Many Classes......That's a good topic on it's own. When I first started racing, I had a B Cat and a B Tunnel running in District 2. B Cat doesn't exist anymore, and there are few races that offer B tunnel class in our district. Classes come and go over the years, kind of like natural selection. The nitro classes that have stood the test of time in district 2 are B Hydro, D Hydro, Scale, and Sport 40. There have been some new classes attempted lately, such as A Hydro and Sport 20, but remains to be seen if they will continue to be of interest. Let's say there are 20 nitro racers in the district that would attend most of the races, and you funneled them into these four classes. Then you would raise the competition. The competitive people would welcome this, the non-competitive people would like to race in a small class just to have fun. So....from an organizational standpoint, we serve all the members, not just the racers. We have to allow new classes if the membership wants them. The opportunity to vote on these is open to all members.

Central Location......This is key I think. Centrally located would make it easier for more people to attend.

In my personal case this year, we had five guys to go to Charleston for the Nitro Nats. For a variety of reasons, one by one they dropped out. This left me with a decision to foot the bill (3 days driving, rooms, meals, fuel, ect.) by my self, our drop out as well. The straw that broke it was work. We are way to busy to get away for 8 days right now, so I could not enter either. My wife and I LOVE Charleston. We have stayed there a few times on vacation and will be returning. I know the club will do a fantastic job there as well. It just too far away to do in the time frame I have. Three days on the road is too much.

 

[Marty Davis]

I like some of the idea's like having it every 2 or 3 years and maybe have regional qualifiers in the off years for people to qualify: Example: (Southeast in GA, Northeast in VA or MD, Central in IN, MI or OH, Southwest in LA, OK or TX, Canada could have one somewhere and any where else that there is interest. Its not perfect idea but we need to do something to get this going again!

Ron:

Do you think that having qualifiers would make a large turnout??? What club would host something that had limited invitations for competing? How would a club make any money?

I think that the Nats will have to be open to everyone in order to have the host club make any $$$. The classes would have to be limited in order to be able to have a good number of entries in each class or we would be back to 1 or 2 heats for each class and I wouldn't come for that. I would like to be able to race 25-50 people in each class to make it competitive and worth the time away from home.

 

[Marty Davis]

There has also been very little new blood in Nitro for a long time, yet I see new faces running gas every year.It sucks if you love nitro but it's the simple truth.

I wonder if the tether boat guys felt the same when radios became popular

The gas guys can go to a hobby shop or online and buy a competitive boat ready to run. Engines are cheap for a competitive one. I see specials on Gizmo's for engines in the $150 area. Gasoline is cheap too. It is no wonder that gas is increasing in attendance. Where can you go and buy a competitive nitro engine for double that? I guess you can run a Go Engine for less than $200 but that takes a lot of work to get competitive with the Novas, CMB's, etc.

Gas also has the same problem that we have with to many classes. Imagine holding a district race (2 days) and try to get all the gas AND all the nirto classes run. It is really difficult and the classes have to be limited substantially.

 

[Mark Bullard]

When we put on all the Internats at Huntsville we made good money. The reason was you had the racers that came for the Trophy Trials. Each one paid $15.00 each for each class. The racers that came in for the Heat racing plus the Trophy Trial racers paid $15.00 for each class. There was also a $30.00 entry fee. The average head count on those years was about 120 racers and they could only enter two boats for US 1. They may had other boats to run in other classes also. But lets look at the US 1 entries at two boats. That is 2 boats for the three events equals $90.00 plus a $30.00 entry fee brings the total to $120.00 per racers. And with a 120 racers that would be $14,400.00. This is real money. The host club can do a lot with this kind of money. I think that the format that is used with the top 20% or top 5 never got more than a third of that. So you see by losing the money for Trophy Trials effects the host club greatly.

I still do not know what the answer is. But maybe if we made the race mean something instead of just another boat race that maybe we would have a better turnout. Reduce the number of US 1 boats to two per member but not limit the entries for other classes for heat racing.

Also maybe the board needs to put it on every year or every other year. Each director would take a job and have his district work those jobs to help off load the work load. It has been done in the pass and has worked well. You could also use a central site or move it to sites in different parts of the country. This would allow the host club site to be shared with IMPBA for the effort of the event.

We pay a lot of money to IMPBA and we send Directors from our Districts. So lets put them to work where we need them.

 

[Gale54]

I have not been around as long as Marty and some of the others chatting on this problem. However I think it all comes down to Time and Money. People just can not get the time off of work like they use too. Also costs of traveling have gone way up and most families don't have the extra money. I have had the opportunity to go to two nats in Evansville once with my family and once just me. Both times the event was not a full US-1 type of race. The first race we stayed for 5 days and nights we shared a room and ate microwave meals to help with costs. When it was all over we totaled up the costs and found that we dipped into our vacation money and could not afford to go to Florida as we wanted to. Personally I would rather have gone to Florida. It's the modern times we have to change to meet the times we are competing against Xboxes and Play Stations for the attentions of our youth and people just don't have the free time like they use to. I believe it is time to change the hole format of the nats. The Gas boats are popular because they are easy and time friendly. The gas nats are also run in 3 days and in shoot out format I believe this is the way to go.

 

[bzubee]

Don you hit the nail on the head with this statement, " The first race we stayed for 5 days and nights we shared a room and ate microwave meals to help with costs. When it was all over we totaled up the costs and found that we dipped into our vacation money and could not afford to go to Florida as we wanted to. Personally I would rather have gone to Florida. It's the modern times we have to change to meet the times we are competing against Xboxes and Play Stations for the attentions of our youth and people just don't have the free time like they use to. " It's not just model boats that are hurting it's also the model airplane hobby. AMA had to lay off some of their employees a while back due to membership drops. The industry is changing most models airplane bought now are ARFs not kits that you actually have to put together. A majority of people want instant gratification now and do not want to wait while they build a model. Boats have always been a challenge since they require a retrieval method of some sort.

 

[gooycheese]

Ok gas is not part of the internats.... neither is fe. Yes I see sport 40 & I saw one other class as "new". The specialty classes are at the host clubs discreation and they are suppose to run after all US1 Classes are complete. Nitro nats to me isn't nats.... its just another long distance heat race for me. Now me personally I try and race my local races.... I can't afford to travel i carpool to every race.... I am lucky I have a bigger races like a mendota or a hobart which are close (75miles or less) & then I split my expenses.

Internats is all I would be interested in, sorry I am just being honesty

 

[jaxracer]

Ok gas is not part of the internats.... neither is fe. Yes I see sport 40 & I saw one other class as "new". The specialty classes are at the host clubs discreation and they are suppose to run after all US1 Classes are complete. Nitro nats to me isn't nats.... its just another long distance heat race for me. Now me personally I try and race my local races.... I can't afford to travel i carpool to every race.... I am lucky I have a bigger races like a mendota or a hobart which are close (75miles or less) & then I split my expenses.

Internats is all I would be interested in, sorry I am just being honesty

I agree in preserving the prestige of the US-1 title. Like he said, Internats and the recognition of winning that title are the sole reason I would travel a significant distance to attend an event like that. The Nitro Nats to me just feels like a glorified heat race just like every other race. From a marketing perspective, you have to have something unique about the race to make it stand out and have significance to racers to attend. That's where I feel time trials to crown a true champion does that. A person not only has to have a good setup, speed and driving ability to collect points throughout the race, but they also have to have actual speed and a truly superior boat to also win the time trial portion.

As was mentioned race length is one of the real issues for people. I've been to one Internats when it was held in Jackson in '05. The race was an absolute blast and one of the funnest weeks of racing that I've had. The downside is 7 days of boat racing is exhausting and difficult to get that amount of time off.

My solution, make the Internats a 4 day race. Consolidate classes and number of entrants however is necessary to make that happen. Race Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Two days (Thursday/Friday) should be a more reasonable amount of time to request off work. Maybe Thursday/Friday you run tunnels and monos and Saturday/Sunday you run hydros and sport hydros (and whatever other specialty classes). At the conclusion of racing on Sunday, heat racing/national champions will be crowned. This way, people have an option and flexibility to attend the event depending on the classes they run. From there, contestants in the top 6 or x percent of their class will be given an invitation to stay an additional 1-2 days to compete for the US-1 title via time trials on Monday and Tuesday. Time trials for US-1 would be completely optional so as to keep the race as flexible as possible and doable for contestants. Essentially, you could be a National Champion(or some other designated title), but not a US-1 winner depending on the outcome of time trials.

I think this would allow more people to attend the race without a full on 7-8 day commitment. Again, flexibility is key so as to incorporate as many racers as possible to the event, while maintaining and returning the prestige of the Internats.

While a central location is a thought, a rolling location like the Super Bowl would be better as it helps to incorporate racers from different coasts and gives everyone a fair opportunity at some point to compete for a US-1. For instance, I live in Jacksonville, FL. I probably wouldn't attend an Internats in Illinois because it's far, but I'd probably attend one in Huntsville.

I would also support an every-other-year event. That way, as was mentioned, it would again return some prestige to the event and give people time to prep and save and would reduce some of the chaotic "what club is going to host the Internats this year" discussion.

Question, what would it take to get the ball rolling, outside of this discussion topic, to get actual changes implemented for this race?

-Mitch

 

[Brandon Atwell]

Ok gas is not part of the internats.... neither is fe. Yes I see sport 40 & I saw one other class as "new". The specialty classes are at the host clubs discreation and they are suppose to run after all US1 Classes are complete. Nitro nats to me isn't nats.... its just another long distance heat race for me. Now me personally I try and race my local races.... I can't afford to travel i carpool to every race.... I am lucky I have a bigger races like a mendota or a hobart which are close (75miles or less) & then I split my expenses.

Internats is all I would be interested in, sorry I am just being honesty

I agree in preserving the prestige of the US-1 title. Like he said, Internats and the recognition of winning that title are the sole reason I would travel a significant distance to attend an event like that. The Nitro Nats to me just feels like a glorified heat race just like every other race. From a marketing perspective, you have to have something unique about the race to make it stand out and have significance to racers to attend. That's where I feel time trials to crown a true champion does that. A person not only has to have a good setup, speed and driving ability to collect points throughout the race, but they also have to have actual speed and a truly superior boat to also win the time trial portion.
As was mentioned race length is one of the real issues for people. I've been to one Internats when it was held in Jackson in '05. The race was an absolute blast and one of the funnest weeks of racing that I've had. The downside is 7 days of boat racing is exhausting and difficult to get that amount of time off.

My solution, make the Internats a 4 day race. Consolidate classes and number of entrants however is necessary to make that happen. Race Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Two days (Thursday/Friday) should be a more reasonable amount of time to request off work. Maybe Thursday/Friday you run tunnels and monos and Saturday/Sunday you run hydros and sport hydros (and whatever other specialty classes). At the conclusion of racing on Sunday, heat racing/national champions will be crowned. This way, people have an option and flexibility to attend the event depending on the classes they run. From there, contestants in the top 6 or x percent of their class will be given an invitation to stay an additional 1-2 days to compete for the US-1 title via time trials on Monday and Tuesday. Time trials for US-1 would be completely optional so as to keep the race as flexible as possible and doable for contestants. Essentially, you could be a National Champion(or some other designated title), but not a US-1 winner depending on the outcome of time trials.

I think this would allow more people to attend the race without a full on 7-8 day commitment. Again, flexibility is key so as to incorporate as many racers as possible to the event, while maintaining and returning the prestige of the Internats.

While a central location is a thought, a rolling location like the Super Bowl would be better as it helps to incorporate racers from different coasts and gives everyone a fair opportunity at some point to compete for a US-1. For instance, I live in Jacksonville, FL. I probably wouldn't attend an Internats in Illinois because it's far, but I'd probably attend one in Huntsville.

I would also support an every-other-year event. That way, as was mentioned, it would again return some prestige to the event and give people time to prep and save and would reduce some of the chaotic "what club is going to host the Internats this year" discussion.

Question, what would it take to get the ball rolling, outside of this discussion topic, to get actual changes implemented for this race?

-Mitch

+1

Also, if a class does not meet the entrant qouta to run for US-1, that class will not be run at that years internats, outside of the novice class which isn't US-1 eligible anyway, as it still opens the door for the next generation to race and enjoy themselves.

 

[JRXHydros]

Don you hit the nail on the head with this statement, " The first race we stayed for 5 days and nights we shared a room and ate microwave meals to help with costs. When it was all over we totaled up the costs and found that we dipped into our vacation money and could not afford to go to Florida as we wanted to. Personally I would rather have gone to Florida. It's the modern times we have to change to meet the times we are competing against Xboxes and Play Stations for the attentions of our youth and people just don't have the free time like they use to. " It's not just model boats that are hurting it's also the model airplane hobby. AMA had to lay off some of their employees a while back due to membership drops. The industry is changing most models airplane bought now are ARFs not kits that you actually have to put together. A majority of people want instant gratification now and do not want to wait while they build a model. Boats have always been a challenge since they require a retrieval method of some sort.

Bill Z. Model Airplanes are very big in St Louis with BIG BANK ACCOUNTS in the clubs...one club has 100,000 + in the club bank account.

 

[Ron B.]

I like some of the idea's like having it every 2 or 3 years and maybe have regional qualifiers in the off years for people to qualify: Example: (Southeast in GA, Northeast in VA or MD, Central in IN, MI or OH, Southwest in LA, OK or TX, Canada could have one somewhere and any where else that there is interest. Its not perfect idea but we need to do something to get this going again!

Ron:

Do you think that having qualifiers would make a large turnout??? What club would host something that had limited invitations for competing? How would a club make any money?

I think that the Nats will have to be open to everyone in order to have the host club make any $$$. The classes would have to be limited in order to be able to have a good number of entries in each class or we would be back to 1 or 2 heats for each class and I wouldn't come for that. I would like to be able to race 25-50 people in each class to make it competitive and worth the time away from home.

2 Qualifiers from 6 or more Regionals at 5 boats per class per Qualifier is 60 boats for one class! Where is that limited numbers? Not that everyone who Q'ed would likely make it due to one issue or another but the potential is there for at least 30 per class if not more! Don't shoot the messenger!