In order to write aerobatic maneuvers, figures and sequences down on paper so that other people can read, fly and judge them a universal 'language' is essential. The system used throughout the aerobatic world was originally developed by the Spanish aerobatic ace José Louis Aresti.

To help you to visualise the fundamental principles we have also included where useful in this series some simple pictorial representations of the aircraft flight path in addition to the appropriate Aresti symbols. To become proficient as an aerobatic judge or pilot a good understanding of the Aresti system is a priority. It has a basic set of "rules" which govern how the symbols are used, and each maneuver has a numeric coefficient giving its difficulty rating that allows the user to build "K-factors" for composite figures.

All maneuvers are marked by judges out of ten and the overall score is calculated by multiplying the judges mark by the 'k' factor (degree of difficulty). All maneuvers have a start point, an end point and pull positive or negative "g" forces.

Aresti codified these as:

The start point is a small circle
The end point is a short vertical line
A solid line represents positive "g" flight - upright
A dashed line represents negative "g" flight - inverted
An unfilled triangle represents a positive "g" maneuver
A solid triangle represents a negative "g" maneuver
A number represents the difficulty of the maneuver
Putting these together gives the Aresti Diagrams for upright and inverted flight. Note that inverted flight has a slightly higher 'k' factor than upright flight . If you score 8/10 for an upright pass and 6/10 for an inverted pass, you will actually collect more points for the inverted pass - 6x3 rather than 8x2. It should be clear then that it's better to score average points on the tough maneuvers than above average on the easy ones - don't completely mess up the maneuvers with "k=30"!
Moving on to rolling maneuvers, a full roll is indicated by a curving arrow.
The half roll is a special case as it is usually used for rolling inverted or upright as part of many other maneuvers. It is designated by a curved arrow which is only drawn above the line of travel.
A 360° roll can have hesitations or points inserted throughout the rolling maneuver and the normally recognised points are 2, 4 and 8. Again, the roll is designated by a curving arrow, the number at the bottom indicating how many hesitations a full roll would be broken up into. The "fraction" at the top of the arrow indicates how many of these hesitations are to occur. A nice variation of the half roll to inverted is the 2 of 4 point roll where a hesitation is inserted - just to check that you know what the rudder is for!
Looping maneuvers are self explanatory, the solid line indicating the flightpath.
In a stall turn, the 180° rotation at the top is indicated by a short curved line. Although the start and end points are shown at different levels - for clarity - they should be at the same height.
A "standard" spin is a positive "g" maneuver so an unfilled triangle (or triangles) are used to indicate the number of turns. Normally the number of spins is one or two.

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