so ive been building a small outdoor track in my backyard and also helping set up for our local club race next month and i keep going back and forth on gate spacing. right now the technical section has gates maybe 8-10 meters apart which feels fine when im flying it solo but i watched some footage from another club and theirs looked way more spaced out, like almost too easy.

the thing is we have a mix of guys at these races, some on 5 inch 4s and some running 6s builds that are genuinely fast, and i dont want the track to feel like a parking lot for the faster pilots but also dont want it to just be a crash fest for the newer ones. does anyone actually think about this stuff when designing or do you just throw gates wherever and see what happens after a few practice laps

also debating whether to use the thin wire gates or proper rigid ones, ive broken so many of the wire ones in testing already

yeah gate spacing is actually way more important than people give it credit for. the rough rule i go by is technical sections around 8-12m depending on how many direction changes you have, and then your straights obviously longer so people can actually open up. if everything is the same distance apart it starts to feel monotonous and the faster guys just pin it everywhere which isnt really racing anymore.

for mixed skill levels honestly the best thing is a flow section and a technical section, let the slower guys find a rhythm somewhere while the fast guys actually have to think. and yeah rigid gates all day, the wire ones look fine but once someone clips one at speed its just chaos. we switched to the proper pvc framed ones two seasons ago and havent looked back, setup takes longer but its worth it

we had the same debate at our club tbh. ended up just flagging out like 3 or 4 different layouts and flying each one a few times before deciding. took like an afternoon but it saved a lot of arguing later. the spacing that felt too easy on its own usually ended up being fine once we added more direction changes so dont judge it until you fly the whole sequence