Dave Kent Posted July 16, 2022 Posted July 16, 2022 I’ve sent this out by email to the 36 COG, but for ease of discussion I have also posted it here. The MYA (and Technical Officer) have proposed to standardise all class rule documents, including the 36 class and tidy up things within the document. For any rules to be changed it needs agreement from the class owners group (you!). Please see attached documents with notes and the original rule document. Have a read through and get back to me with any thoughts by 6th August, when I shall canvas a vote. MYA 36 Class Rule revised with comments for COGv4.docx MYA 36 Class Rule base word doc with comments.docx
John949 Posted July 17, 2022 Posted July 17, 2022 I don't own a 36 but I am interested in class rules in general, so I had a quick look. You may think some of these points are pedantic but remember this is a set of rules. It is what they actually say that matters, not what you think they should say or what you think the rule writer meant to say. C.5.1 (c) More than two channels of radio control are prohibited. Most sets used by radio sailors have at least 4 channels so this rule would seem to outlaw them, even if the extra channels are not used. The IOM rules, for example, place no restriction on the number of channels but do limit boats to one 'rudder control unit' and one 'sheet control unit'. Perhaps similar wording would make the intention of the rule clearer. Changing the rule to 'More than two channels of radio control may not be used (to control the boat)' might seem to be a solution but some people use extra channels and mixers to change the 'fully sheeted in' position. Is this allowed or not? I think the COG members need to decide what is and isn't allowed and re-write the rule to make it as clear as possible. C.5.1 (f) Except for the establishment and maintenance of a radio control link, control unit positioning information, signal strength and battery status information, radio transmissions from the boat while racing is prohibited[G1] . Radio sets are getting ever more complex and just what information is exchanged between receiver and transmitter is difficult to ascertain (and even more difficult to police). It might be better to phrase the rule in terms of what information can be used rather than what may or not exist. For example: Whilst racing, the display of information received form the boat is limited to: Link Status Information, Battery Status Information, Control Unit Position (and anything else you want to allow). C.5.1 (d) The following are prohibited: (1) Non-mechanical systems for automated control of the rig. (2) Non-mechanical systems for automated control of the rig. Is this a typo and the second 'rig' should have been 'rudder'? There are similar rules in most classes and I do struggle with just what they mean. For example, a servo uses mechanical components like gears and electric motors but most modern servos also use microcontrollers to automatically control the output position to match the demanded position. Surely these must be allowed. I think the problem here is that the rule writers are trying to write a 'catch all' rule. Such rules rarely work in practice and a more precise definition is needed. For radio boats it might be better to state the converse e.g. The rig/ rudder may only be moved as a result of inputs made by the competitor.
Dave Kent Posted July 17, 2022 Author Posted July 17, 2022 Hi John, Thank you for your input. In my opinion I prefer the original rules as they do what they need to. But the MYA have asked me canvas opinion.. so I shall Dave
Dave Kent Posted July 17, 2022 Author Posted July 17, 2022 (edited) On 17/07/2022 at 18:31, John949 said: C.5.1 (d) The following are prohibited: (1) Non-mechanical systems for automated control of the rig. (2) Non-mechanical systems for automated control of the rig. Is that this to exclude vane control from a RC class? I agree should be 1. Rudder 2. Rig or as you say: The rig/ rudder may only be moved as a result of inputs made by the competitor. Edited July 19, 2022 by Dave Kent Question.
Phil Holliday Posted July 18, 2022 Posted July 18, 2022 I have picked up on this thread from the forum but I am surprised that, as a 36 registered owner, I have not received any other notification. How many 36 owners are actually aware of these proposals? John's comment re C 5.1c is interesting and could spark a whole new debate. The rule has been there for a long time and this version of that rule is no change from the existing rules . My reading of this rule tells me that "more than two channels of radio control are prohibited" to me this means that if I use more than two channels to control my boat then I am acting illegally. Whether my transmitter/receiver have 2 or 22 channels is irrelevant. How this is policed is another matter but with so much of the rules of sailing relying on honesty/integrity/self policing I don't see why it should be a problem. I agree with comments on C 5.1(d) looks like a typo Changing the requirement for an Official Measurer to a Class Measurer makes sense, especially as sail measurement does not enter into the certification process. As a competitor in several classes I support these changes to bring the 36 class rules format in line with other classes
Dave Kent Posted July 18, 2022 Author Posted July 18, 2022 (edited) Thank you Phil. Sorry I sent the email out to the original COG email list, as I couldn’t find my updated one. That’s why I posted it here also. I also sent a questionnaire out in January and posted it on here asking for 36 owners to reply, I had limited responses. Edited July 18, 2022 by Dave Kent
John949 Posted July 19, 2022 Posted July 19, 2022 Please don't take this personally Phil but your comments on radio channels nicely illustrates the point I'm trying to make. I'm sure everyone would agree that the rule is meant to mean that you can only USE two channels but that is not what it actually says. We don't want someone protesting 95% of the boats at the next Nationals for breaking this rule, so why not change it? I fully support the idea that Class Rules should be standard across classes wherever practicable, so (assuming the intention is the same) then why not use the IOM wording. After all it is the number of actuators that the rule seeks to limit, not the means to achieve this. Dave, I don't understand your comment about excluding vane control from an RC class. The rule (as it stands) says that a mechanical vane control system (as I understand they all have to be currently) is allowed, but an electronic one isn't. Someone else posted a while ago that banning electronic vane steering is perverse. I'm sure it was done years ago on cost grounds but today an electronic system would be cheaper and better than a mechanical one - so why are we banning it? Any rule that seeks to legislate about the method rather than the effect is highly dubious. In other words, is automatic rudder control allowed, yes or no, and why would this answer change depending upon whether it was done via a mechanical system or an electronic one (or a combination of the two)? Rules need to change as technology advances. Taking the 10R as an example, the original rules (well the oldest ones I can find!) had no restrictions on draught, sail roach or mast height. Presumably these things were limited by the materials available at the time (wood & cotton!). Thanks to carbon fibre and Mylar, rules have had to be introduced to limit (or at least measure) these parameters. In my view many of these additional rules and restrictions have been added piecemeal and 'tacked on' to the existing rules, and this has resulted in class rules which are at best confusing and at worst contradictory. If the 36 COG are going to revise their rules then I would urge them to take a step back and think about what the class should be about and then write the rules to suit that, rather than tinker with the wording of the existing rules. Some thought to the future would also be in order. Currently all classes ban on-board video (AFAIK). Again this was done on cost grounds originally but today a whole new branch of RC modelling has appeared using just this technology (i.e. drone racing). Radio sailing needs to decide what it needs to do about this. Simply ignoring it closes off a significant potential growth area for our sport, but how to integrate it with existing radio sailing is a challenge.
Dave Kent Posted July 19, 2022 Author Posted July 19, 2022 Hi John Sorry that should have been a question rather a statement! I presumed it was to exclude Vane control from a RC class. Oops!
Phil Holliday Posted July 25, 2022 Posted July 25, 2022 Using the IOM rule for radio channels doesn't work. We have overlooked the fact that the 36 class rule are Open rules whereas the IOM are Closed rules. Maybe if C.5.1(c) is changed to "Use of more than two channels of radio control are prohibited" would work?
Roger Stollery Posted July 31, 2022 Posted July 31, 2022 Why is MYA Council rewriting history? What is happening in MYA Council? The reason for asking this question is that the current situation is that one person, the MYA technical officer, is making a proposal to change the 36" class rules. It is re-writing history, because this proposal goes against what Council decided at the February meeting in 2017, which was to reject the proposal to allow carbon spars in the class. The Tech Team had been working on this for 2 months and had put together a very balanced argument for removing the current restriction on spar material. During this process, information about the potential change had been sent directly to 130 owners and there was also a 36" item on the MYA Forum for discussion. Council were asked at that historic February meeting for this proposal to be put to those owners for a vote, but despite approval of the Tech Team's work, Council stated that there must be a process for changing this national MYA class rule. In particular trustee Vic Bellerson stated that "You cannot have one or 2 people proposing to change the rule and there needs to be a process where the proposal comes from the class members". 36" Class Captain, Peter Moore included this process in his single page 36" Class Owners Group rules, most importantly including following; 7. Change to the 36" Class Rules a) Any proposal to change the class rules shall be made to the Class Captain in writing and be supported by at least 5 members from different affiliated clubs. These COG rules were subsequently agreed by Council and the vote went ahead, successfully removing the spar material restriction. The 36" class rules became effective in October 2017, almost a year after the original proposal. The success of this new idea of the COG getting ordinary member invonled in running their particular class led to the development of a similar idea for the other classes, led by the MYA secretary, Chris Cook, and these were posted on the MYA website later in 2017. So what has changed in Council to create this reversal of approach? District councillors have come and gone, but 5 voices in Council who remember what they did for members then, should have not allowed this current situation to be tolerated. 36" Class Captain, Dave Kent should just throw out this attempt to change the rules. The reasons appear to be just nitpicking, although one or 2 small minor items could be updated if owners require them to be changed. As neither 36" radio or free sailors have had any problem with the rules in the 5 year period since they have been in operation, there is clearly no need for the drastic change, like making them more complicated and lengthy, more difficult to understand and doubling the number of class rule pages, just to satisfy one person. Class owners and ordinary MYA members need Council to ensure better consideration than this. 1
Roger Stollery Posted July 31, 2022 Posted July 31, 2022 John, Most of what you say in this footnote for the 36" class rules issue is correct, that class rules do need to be changed to keep up with the technological advances, but in your mention of the 10 rater class, you need more information to correct the comment made up the control of the roach area. While you are correct that there originally was no height limitation, the draft was controlled by the concrete edged lakes on which the boats sailed so there was no need to create an artificial draft limit. The 700 mm limit only came about just before the Millennium as a concern that clubs might be sued at a big event because of the lack of depth of water. A simple practical limitation. Originally, all the sail area was measured in a straightforward and simple way using a tape and simple calculation with basic arithmetic. This was in the era of gaff rigs, where there were virtually no roaches on any of the sails. the only class rule needed was length X sail area divided by a constant < or =10. Just one line was sufficient. The problem occurred in 1923 when the secretary of the MYA, Edward Hobbs, who was very well read about the full-size world and every sort of rig description, decided that the MYA should follow the YRA, the equivalent of the RYA, in their measurement of sail area, which substituted batten limits for the actual measurement of the roach area and adopted the measurement of only 85% of the foretriangle area. In those days full-size yachts had many headsails so for the official measurer it made measuring this part of the sail area easier. Mr Hobbs, probably looking to the full-size in awe because as they were 'bigger'and had more authority, he thought this would be better, but it was was a huge mistake. It was a completely disastrous move in that it destroyed the simplicity of the rule, because in the development of Bermudan rigs and particularly the tall rigs in the London clubs where winds were generally light, as the height went up so did the area of the sail and so there was an increasing size of 10 raters. This was particularly noticeable in the 1940s and 50s when impervious and stiffer materials replaced cotton. It came to a head after Warlord's winning the 1966 10 rater Nationals, with an unmeasured wing mast (which the MYA were advised of before it was made, but did nothing about limiting the area) and also the ability to use Mylar material to create virtually any size of roach led the MYA to appoint the subcommittee of John Lewis, Chris Dicks and myself to review the rules. The 1968 rule change document brought back the simplicity of the rule with all of the area measured and because of the free area gained since 1923 the constant in the formula had to be reviewed in order not to disadvantage existing boats. This should be a warning that sport of model yachting should not necessarily follow full-size ideas, but develop rules that relate to what we want to do with the development of our models and their sailing. Currently the MYA is heading down a route that members don't want following a higher authority with instead of a single line, there are 29 pages of short bits of text with constant cross-referencing and you have to read all this bumph until page 16 before finding the simple formula and then there is the complexity of the measurement system, which you have already commented on... On 19/07/2022 at 11:18, John949 said: Rules need to change as technology advances. Taking the 10R as an example, the original rules (well the oldest ones I can find!) had no restrictions on draught, sail roach or mast height. Presumably these things were limited by the materials available at the time (wood & cotton!). Thanks to carbon fibre and Mylar, rules have had to be introduced to limit (or at least measure) these parameters.
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