Resignation of President of Radio Control Combat Association By Lou Melancon, February 14th, 2005 I resigned as RCCA President in January 2005 only two months after winning re-election.  Many members have asked why and I haven’t responded publicly to them.  In the next few brief paragraphs I will both explain why and share with you my thoughts regarding combat going forward.  Incidentally, I think Combat and the RCCA both have bright and unlimited futures’. After four years of hard core combat, attending 10 or more contests each year, either hosting or running many of them I was tired.  My life was so consumed with RC Aircraft combat that each day 4 to 6 hours were spent building, communicating, and talking about it.  In short I needed to get a life. Late in 2004 I began to feel uneasy about a few things.  I wanted to jump on the electric combat bandwagon and design and build new planes for it, but couldn’t make the time in my schedule of building for contests that would allow development work.  I also realized I was putting my passion for combat ahead of other important things in my personal and business life and it would have to stop.  My thinking came to a conclusion in a week where I lost two competition grade SSC planes in practice, got more than the normal amount of membership email telling me that I was single handedly ruining combat, and realized I would have to put out even more effort this year than past years if I wanted to make local contests, Paris, Havoc, Dixie, the Nats and others.  Instead of being a hobby my involvement with RC Combat had evolved into a very large job that was getting more and more demanding. On a Friday morning I asked Ed Kettler to take over for me and advised Roy Appleton of my intent to step.   Roy has done the lion’s share of work for RCCA for the last two and a half years and deserves tremendous appreciation from the membership for the work he has done. On the next day, Saturday I advised the board that I would be stepping down and the following day posted my congratulations to Ed Kettler on the membership’s Soapbox forum. To summarize there was no event that made me resign, no member who got under my skin, nor was there any issue that was so emotional that it made me leave.  I was overwhelmed, tired, and wanted to get back to designing and building new planes without the pressure of deadlines for contests being the driving force in my modeling life. After several years involvement in the RCCA I can offer some observations, which are simply my opinions.   The first comment is about the discussions that go on in the RCCA Forums.  Quite often they are heated, cause anger between modelers, and often never get resolved.  A big part of the problem is that any participant on the forums has a say equal to any other.  Folks have the ability to provide their opinions that is far greater than their contributions to the sport.  Everyone has a right to their opinion and should have the chance to offer it.  Readers of the forum also have the right to know the past contributions of the person offering the opinion with regard to combat. One of the reasons that folks get emotionally charged up about rules discussions, scale fidelity, displacement limits and myriad other things are from their own personal perspectives.  The RCCA actually has two bodies of members: hard core competitors, and not so hard core. The hard core competitors will fly the rule book events year in and year out; will sometimes jump into the discussions but mostly spend their time building better planes to meet the existing rules or practicing combat with other hard core members.  These are the members who travel to contests.  They routinely make 6-10 contests annually and are concerned about where they are in the National Points Standings. The not so hard core of fliers consists of those who don’t travel much, make few contests, and are concerned with combat at their club or local level than the national level.  They generally offer up suggestions about how to change classes to improve them, ask for new classes to fit their wants and desires and often spend a lot of time trying to change others to their way of thinking. Ultimately the RCCA has to support all forms of combat.  When AMA recognized RCCA as the Special Interest Group for RC Combat they asked the name be changed from American Scale Dogfighters Association (ASDA) because that name limited the group to “scaleâ€� combat. So as the National RC Combat organization RCCA has to and does support all forms of combat. The mistake is often made on the forums when discussing rules, classes, and displacements that National Rules should be developed and a class created for what someone has dreamed up as the “perfectâ€� form of combat.  RCCA has done a wonderful job of creating a method for new classes to develop as â €œProvisionalâ€� events.  What RCCA cannot do is respond to every one who wants a change to an existing class to suit their own tastes. What about the future? I think there are two things that will happen in Combat to make the future very bright.   The first is that electric combat will develop. Electrics will simplify the propulsion part of the equation and allow for more creativity in airframe design.  Second I think RCCA will find a way to reduce the carnage in Combat.  I believe that folks are tired of spending 100 hours of shop time for every hour of combat time and will figure out ways to make airplanes last longer.  Once this happens the effort to stay in combat changes from marathon building sessions to creative designing. Creative work is a lot more fun than the manual labor of building.