Originally Posted by georgegassaway

I was always ticked off when I'd see a piston-launched model at a WSMC "pop" up 20-30 feet, without the motor firing, due to black powder (or whatever) that had been added to the piston to make it perform better. With NO repercussions (indeed, it did not even count as a flight, they got to do it over). Saw it happen several times.

TOTALLY illegal. But nobody protested. And the RSO's that will DQ a flight if it is ignited even 1/4 second before they say "zero" in their countdown.......totally turned a blind eye to absolutely blatant obvious cheating as though nothing unusual had happened at all. (The rules do not allow the launchers to provide any acceleration that is not 100% due to the motor itself. No bungee catapults, no BP, no linear "rail guns" etc. )

Nobody on the US Team pulled that s***. If anyone had, some of their teammates would have had a talking to with them and no doubt the team manager (such as John Langford) would have a very serious discussion about not doing that again, or ELSE. Because if one team member is cheating like that, it makes it look like the whole team is in on it (and indeed I am sure the models I did see that did that, were indeed the way their teams did it on purpose. Not one person choosing to do that on their own without the rest of the team knowing or even colluding.).

But I did not recall seeing it happen at the last few WSMC's I attended. So maybe the officials did crack down on it eventually, and it stopped. Or perhaps the cheaters got better at cheating in a way that the extra BP would only go off if the motor really did ignite.

If a model using a piston popped into the air at a NARAM, with the motor not being lit, guaranteed the RSO and/or CD would be all over figuring out why/how that happened (Not acting like an oblivious referee at a 3rd rate pro wrestling match). And if the flier did purposely cheat, they would probably be DQ'ed from the entire event, previous scores wiped away. And possibly thrown out from the whole contest depending on the severity. Nothing like that has happened before, but the rules certainly would allow for such penalties.