Proposals from the RFL

[kronic]

I say yes to the 13.6kg change. That would make Weed within weight! Seriously, just beacuse weve got an extra 1.6kg to play with doesnt mean everyones going to go out and produce mega spinners. You can also get some pretty good flippers made within the higher weight limit, and there arent many of them around at the moment.

[grant_ploughbot]

Well i guess we wait and see the outcome

[craig_anto]

how heavy is an etek? can i get 2 in a feather? no thatd be silly Craig but 2 Lems? that i could do, i could build a feather with 18hp of drive 13.6kg please

[geoff]

Look, you just behave yourself Craig!!
Oh, and by the way, yes you could in theory...but you wont have any weight left for batteries

There seems to be broad acceptance of the desirability of unifying the weight limits and an acceptance by many of 13.6kg for feathers. The governing body need to think about how long the consultation process should take and when a change might take effect. It sounds from many of the above emails that my earlier suggestion of the UK championships 2007 may be too far away? What do others think?

I support David Calkins proposal to unify the weight classes world wide, as set out in his most recent posting. Not only will this be good for our sport internationally but I suspect it will be good for it in the UK as well. A 13.6 kg feather is easier to build than a 12 kg feather. The small classes (6kg and down) are much more popular in the US than here; we can hope that an international standard of 6 kg (which we already use) will lead to some of them competing here and growth of that class.

hey Geoff how bout i borrow the motors from Scorpion
battereies? who needs batteries itll be powered by my ego thats as good as slapping a nuclear power plant on her

[geoff]

These proposed changes to the weight limits may be only the first step in the unifacation process. Ultimatly we hope that there will also be a universal set of build rules for all weight classes too. This however is going to a long process, having to incorparate the statutory health & safety legislation from the UK/Europe, the US and Australia alone will be a total nightmare (if indeed it can be done at all!) let alone the more down to earth problems of things like maximun voltages, removable links V power switches etc. etc.
So if we can agree the weights we will be at least part of the way there.
As to a time scale, first the FRA/DRG/GRA will need to formaly discuss and vote on the changes. Once this has happened our constitution requires that any changes to the specifactions will not take effect for a further 3 months to allow teams to make any changes to their machines.
So Im fairly certain that there will be no changes before early 2007.

That sounds ok.

Will the weight change rule(if it happens) be adopted before the other rules? I personally would prefer a whole new change when ALL the rules are set in stone and then all thrown at us at once. Atleast we can carry on for a while until its all sorted asd normal. These may be your plans, just curiouse

[leorcc]

i agree with Grant that it is better to implement all rule changes at once so we can start building accordingly.