[Sideslip]

Personally, I think the experiences of collisions at the Dawn patrol are going to turn out to be the exception and not the rule. The wind was very high that day, and most pilots were still working the bugs out of their planes, and consequently may have suffered from "tunnel vision" thus impeding their ability to avoid collisions.

However, if collisions do turn out to be a problem that threatens to discourage people from building and competeing with scale WWI crates, then I agree it is worth trying to address the problem.

One idea I had was a team attrition form of combat. It would work like this:

Two teams of three aircraft fly the round. When an enemy is cut, he must immediately land, as if shot down. The attrition continues until only one team is represented in the air. The winng team recieves a bonus for winning the round.

Scoring would be otherwise the same for cuts, remaining streamer, etc... so you would still end up with individual pilot scores in addition to the team bonus. To determine which team wins the event, you add up the pilots scores of all team members, plus their team bonuses.

Advantages vis a vis midairs:

I think this idea would reduce midairs for two main reasons;

1.) Because team members want to cut only the enemy, and not their team mates, they will have to fly more carefully and line up attacks. This will naturally increase situational awareness, and hopefully reduce midairs as a result.

2.) Because of the attrition aspect of planes having to land when cut (shot down) the number of planes in the air will reduce as the round progresses, reducing the chances for midairs.

I find that high winds really make for erratic and unpredictable flight paths with WWI planes, and winds speed the action up considerably as well. I think it would be well if we developed a number of ideas, such as the above, that Contest Directors would have the option of reverting to if the weather conditions on the day of their event are not favorable for traditional combat practices.

After all... in the real war, they just didn't fly if the conditions were bad

As an aside... I don't think there is anything wrong with brainstorming for ideas that help reduce carnage on aircraft, nor do I think it is inconsistent with the idea of Combat. In the real world of both WWI and WWII, midairs were uncommon. Pilots valued their lives, and countries valued their aircraft... and many policies were followed that tried to balance achieving military objectives with the need to preserve one's airforce from destruction.

(Some people may be unaware that Allied command refused to allow British WWI pilots to have parachutes, even though the technology was available and in use by balloon observers. The reasoning was that Command feared the pilots would abandon their aircraft at the first sign of trouble, and preserving the aircraft was vital to the war effort. You can imagine then that WWI pilots were very very carefull about engaging in combat, and did not often do so recklessly.)

As with Bent, I'm just throwing out some ideas that may, or may not, be worth trying... in the meantime though, I'm working on the assumption I will need at least two WWI planes next season