USDAA To Lower A Frame
06 Mar 2007
After the annual Board of Directors meeting the USDAA has posted an announcement indicating that it will drop the height of the A Frame for both the Championship and Performance programs.
The Board has revised the regulations for the A-frame, setting the
height in the Championship Program for large dogs at no less than 5’9”
and no more than 5’11”, and for small dogs and all dogs in the
Performance Program, no less than 5’5” and no more than 5’7”. The
final regulations will stipulate the range of angles in order that the
standard will be more accurately specified and not be impacted by
different construction standards. (In adopting the change, it was
noted that the IFCS standard is may be changing to 5’11”, or 180cm).
(Note that this announcement was modified on March 9, 2007; the range
for the small dogs was intended to be 5’5” to 5’7” instead of 5’3” to
5’5”. The top of each range represents the IFCS international
standard.)
The effective date is March 30, 2007.
Now that the IFCS is lowering the A Frame this keeps USDAA in line with those specifications. There seems to be a fair amount of celebration on the USDAA email list for interested competitors.
The 4 inch height drop will reduce the angle the boards make with the ground and should lessen the impact on the dog’s using 2o2o for their contact criteria. By my calculations the angle a nine foot board makes with the ground with the height at 75 inches is 44 degrees, with the height at 71 inches the angle is reduced to 41 degrees.
Thanks to 1728’s Right Triangle Calculator and 1728’s Pythagorean Calculator for making the calculations easy.
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