so ive been putting together a small track in my backyard, maybe 40x25 meters if that, and i cant figure out the gate spacing. ive been watching a bunch of multiGP footage and obviously those are way bigger courses but i want something that still flows well for like 3 inch builds since thats mostly what i fly with friends on weekends.

right now i have 4 gates and two flag poles with pool noodles and honestly it feels like every corner is just a hard stop. there's no real flow to it. im not sure if its the gate angles or just that 40 meters is genuinely too small to do anything interesting. anyone built something compact that actually worked? or is there a minimum size before it starts feeling like real racing

yeah 40x25 with 4 gates is gonna feel choppy no matter what you do, the issue is you dont have enough room between obstacles for the speed to build up and then actually matter. what helps on smaller courses is angling the gates so the pilot has to plan two moves ahead instead of just pointing and throttling, like a chicane kind of thing even on a tiny scale. also consider dropping to 2.5 or even 2 inch if you want the course to feel proportionally more like real racing ? the speed difference inside a small space is pretty significant and it changes how the gaps feel entirely.

the pool noodle poles are fine honestly, multiGP grassroots events use way jankier stuff than that. just get the angles right first and add gates later once you have a baseline lap that actually feels like it has rhythm to it.

we ran a 3s tiny whoop class on a course roughly that size last summer and it worked okay. the trick was making a figure-8 layout instead of a loop, gives you a natural rhythm and the crossing point in the middle adds a little tension if youre racing someone. honestly the gate count mattered less than having at least one section where you could carry speed for more than like two seconds