CONTEST ENDED: 2021 March Mayhem Custom Aircraft Challenge

[James]

Our Contest has ended and winners and results are below




You can watch all the results here:

Congratulations to Ralph Stepper for his beautiful P-38 receiving the most 1st place votes out of 2859 entries!

In the voting portion of the contest the winner was:

In the voting round the max points that could be acquired with a perfect bracket was 1920.

Here is what the final bracket voting ended up being:

[crxmanpat]

Voted!

[James]

Voted!

Its harder the further you get

[Gringotuerto]

The pics in the voting window are small, and I couldn't figure out how to view them larger. So I went back to the original submissions to decide in some cases:

https://www.hobbysquawk.com/forum/the-lounge/motion-rc-live-weekly-youtube-show/301207-entry-period-closed-2021-march-mayhem-custom-aircraft-challenge-official-entry-thread

I have to say all 64 of these are *excellent*, as well as many that didn't make it to the bracket. I guess we were all stuck at home a lot this year!

Anyway, given the season, I can't help thinking of the Champions League theme...."Die Meister; Die Besten; Les grandes avions; The Champions! " I know, wrong sport for March Madness, but it has a much better theme song.

[Evan D]

Agreed, plus many have additional pictures and details. Like the awesome MiG-29 with a ton of little extras plus a wonderful paint scheme. The one picture doesn’t do it justice.

[Gringotuerto]

Agreed, plus many have additional pictures and details....

Right, everybody has to make their own decision how to vote, but IMHO it is fair to consider if someone put in a lot of extra detail work, that you know is there from various threads, even though you can't see it in the particular photo. There are some pretty impressive looks achievable with nothing more than "Krylon & Callie", but some people went waaaaay beyond that.

[Dirty Dee]

if you right-click the pictures, and open the image in a new tab, it has them much larger

[paulrkytek]

I was spoilt for choice on another day I could have made a different choice and could have picked any one of my final 6

[mshagg]

Man that was tough. Great to see a bunch of planes I'm not familiar with as well - that Digital Camo A-10? Just wow.

Actually relieved I didn't make the cut, wouldn't have made it past the first bracket!

[Flyles]

voted .
that was tough such great planes

[Griffon Wings]

I watch again on youtube last episode , in that way i can enlarge easy the screen. Marked on a paper and now i’m ready to vote !
problem is... they all looking great!!

[sam51401]

Of course I was biased for the final winner on my pick but man, to compare a prop plane with the detail and weathering as presented against and equally prepared jet is just mind blowing. I think the best is to weight what it took skill wise and factor complexity with overall effect in representing a true scale, real world finish is my bases. Even that has a personal perception built in but it may some how level the field a little. All the choices are works of art and you see the effort put forth that maybe highlights who is a rc modeler as to someone who has built model cars, planes and more over their life time. That is a skill earned with patience and time and a big kudos to all for sharing your secrets and talent. Awesome work all around and thankful to the manufactures and Motion RC for giving us these “blank canvases” to display our talents. Now what do I want to pick for next year to make over?

[sam51401]

James, just food for thought on bracketing. Would it be fair to maybe group each division to a general category of type of aircraft? Say the Lift division could be Jets, Drag be props, Civil schemes, military and airliner, could be Thrust and Weight could be Heli. As in basketball, the divisions are based roughly on geo location of the teams to a region. Maybe with enough promotion, there could be helis and then you would have a final four, as if that wouldn’t be hard enough as it is now, wow! It was really hard to pick a nice, well detailed AL37 against an equally awesome weathered prop or jet this year so maybe this could present a little more equally among all the “players”.
Miss having the gang at Jet Jam in Indiana but maybe this year or again down the road.

[James]

James, just food for thought on bracketing. Would it be fair to maybe group each division to a general category of type of aircraft? Say the Lift division could be Jets, Drag be props, Civil schemes, military and airliner, could be Thrust and Weight could be Heli. As in basketball, the divisions are based roughly on geo location of the teams to a region. Maybe with enough promotion, there could be helis and then you would have a final four, as if that wouldn’t be hard enough as it is now, wow! It was really hard to pick a nice, well detailed AL37 against an equally awesome weathered prop or jet this year so maybe this could present a little more equally among all the “players”.
Miss having the gang at Jet Jam in Indiana but maybe this year or again down the road.

Sorry for the delayed response sam51401

I tried to do that, but it's very hard simply based on the fact that we don't know what will get submitted. We got about 200 entries both years and when trying to find the "best" 64 to place in the tournament, we try our hardest to not limit any one type of aircraft over the other if that makes sense.

Basically, you have 16 aircraft per division, so if I had a division of 16 military jets, 16 prop warbirds, 16 helis, and 16 civil, what if the 17th, 18th, and 19th Military Jets are just way better than the 14th, 15th, and 16th civilian planes?

What we have done is once we have all our entries, then I place them all in a folder and copy that folder in our companies shared drive for the staff to make their own picks. So myself, Alpha, Todd, etc will go into their own folder with all the entries and they will sort their favorite/best 64. Then I take all our top 64 and aggregate them to find which 64 were chosen by the most staff and then we debate all the "fringe" ones that may have only gotten picked by one of us.

So, when it's time to try and make the divisions and match-ups I have to use what is there. This year we had 12 AL37's, had we got an even 16, I probably would have made an AL37 division, but if I got 17 AL37's, then I probably would have done like I did and divide the AL37's amongst all the divisions.

Push come to shove, it is not a perfect process by any means just like the real NCAA tournament, but at least they have a season of stats and standing to try and better seed teams, where we don't have that luxury. But that's why the Grand Prize winner is the aircraft that the most entries will have placed as the overall winner. That shouldn't make a difference in this instance who they are matched up against in any round or division. Anyone's favorite plane will beat everything else, every time regardless.

And I will say, I have been checking the voting over the past 2 weeks and I am fully surprised by the aircraft that are winning as none of them made my personal final 4 oddly. But all 64 entries are worthy.

Tomorrow's show will be fun for sure! Don't miss it!

[sam51401]

James thanks for all the work and managing this March Madness. Much appreciate your explanation and what is involved in the process to resolve to the final winner and my hat off to you and the crew. I enjoyed the bracket break downs and yep it was really hard to pick just one but there can be just one so now off to the shop to try for next years 64 .

[Ralph Stepper]

Hi to James and the Motion RC team as well as to all of you who paticipated in this great challenge,
I want to thank all of you for making this happen!

I still cannot believe my P-38 won this - so many beautiful re-do's released and finally made the 64 at the end! I am convinced that many of these superb birds had at least the same appearance and craftmenship to make this challenge win, with a lot of great detailling and upgrade features!

On the P-38 I just added the metal gears, did a complete cockpit makeover and - beside the small re-paint action - tried to especially realize a still realistic but heavy weathering. In total 130 working hours went into this build.
It flies like on rails and is a real crowd pleaser in the air! 😀

Again - participating in this challenge was a lot of fun and I am very pleased and honored being a part of it.
Thank you all for voting!!!

Take care and stay healthy!
Ralph

[Shark102]

Congratulations, I’ll have to settle for winning the 64 contest (bracket wise) but lost in the end. But seriously, amazing P-38 and congrats once again :)

[Ralph Stepper]

Thank you John, but also congrats to your beautiful Corsair!
You were so close at the end and deserved the win at least as much for sure!

Ralph

[Shark102]

Thank you John, but also congrats to your beautiful Corsair!
You were so close at the end and deserved the win at least as much for sure!

Ralph

Thanx!

[sam51401]

If i didnt know already, that is totaly awesome and i would think im reading a professional build article in Fine Scale Modeler. Congrats again and looking forward to what you will bring to the game next year along with all the other players.