ran my first actual timed comp last weekend, not just casual flying with friends but an organized event with timing gates and brackets and the whole deal. went 0 for 4 in qualifying which is rough but whatever i expected to do badly. the thing thats bugging me is i cant tell if i was losing time because of setup stuff or just purely skill issues.

im on a 5inch with a stack thats probably a year old at this point, f7 fc, 45amp escs, 2306 motors around 2450kv running 6s. video felt okay to me but in the heat of it i kept losing the track layout in my head and ended up taking wide lines that killed my lap time. also clipped two gates which i never do in practice. other pilots seemed way more composed, like they werent fighting their quads at all.

someone after the event mentioned my rates might be too high for comp flying? i run pretty agressive rates for freestyle and maybe never adjusted them. is that actually a thing or just noise

the rates thing is real, not just noise. freestyle rates optimized for big fluid moves are genuinely a liability in a tight race course where precision matters more than rotation speed. a lot of people coming from freestyle backgrounds run rates that make the quad feel twitchy on small corrections which is exactly what you dont want when youre threading gates. id drop your super rates and expo down and see how it feels in practice before dismissing it.

the track layout thing though ? thats almost entirely reps. first comp nerves are a totally different animal from casual flying and your brain just blanks on stuff you thought was memorized. seriously the only fix is doing more events, your brain learns to handle the adrenaline after a few times and the muscle memory starts to take over

your hardware sounds fine to me tbh, people win on older stacks all the time. 2450kv on 6s is solid for 5inch racing. i wouldnt go chasing hardware upgrades until youve ruled out the other stuff. also clipping gates in comp when you dont in practice is basically universal first-timer experience, the pressure does something weird to your depth perception i swear