The 11th Annual Maine IMAC Challenge was once again hosted by the Sky Streakers R/C Club of New Gloucester, Maine with Tom Chabot once again acting as CD for the event. Tom lovingly refers to the Maine IMAC Challenge as the "little contest that could" as it continues to be a success year after year nearly a 100% return rate of pilots from the previous year, as well as new pilots giving their first IMAC contest a shot! All in all, we had 18 registered pilots throughout all classes with the only unrepresented class being Unlimited. Ray Labonte, owner of Ray and Robin's Hobby Center graciously sponsored the event and covered ALL of the entry fees for each and every pilot that attended the contest! Thank you Ray!!! Smart Fly and Bill Hemple Aircraft also sponsored the event with product for a pilot raffle! Thank you to both of those companies for the support!!!
Saturday morning began with pilots rolling in around 8am or so. Tom has registration open and once again, his faithful counterpart and resident score keeper, Carissa, was on hand to assist with running the contest. For those that haven’t met Carissa, she is an absolute pleasure to be around and knows the scoring programs through and through! After everyone was registered and ready to go, Tom called a Pilots meeting at 9:15 am to go over the contest "basics" as well as the changes that have been made for 2009. Contestant judging was once again used and as always with the Maine contest, pilots readily stepped forward to volunteer for judging duty so assigning judging duties for the day were set within minutes! Based on the number of contestants, it was decided that one flight would suffice and that we would shoot to get in 3 full rounds before 5pm, with wheels up on the first round at 9:45. The group also held a discussion regarding weather as we were looking at absolutely gorgeous weather for Saturday, with slight chance of showers on Sunday. It was decided that it looked promising enough on Sunday to go for 3 rounds on knowns on Saturday, and on Sunday, follow up with the unknown, and a final 4th round of knowns. Upon completion of the pilots meeting, the first round of Basic began and day got started with the first two classes lined up and ready to go, with pilots making a conscious effort to have their engines running, and getting airborne before the pilot ahead of them finished their last maneuver. This kept the contest running smooth, and efficiently with almost ZERO downtime! Great job by Tom and Carissa for being so organized, and a kudos to all of the pilots for doing their part to keep things moving along!
Saturday Results
At the end of the third round Sunday, it was evident that all of the pilots brought their "A" game. While competition was stiff in all of the classes, there was a down right battling the Sportsman, Intermediate, and Advanced classes. With two rounds of scores posted and the third round being kept a closely guarded secret, it was neck and neck with Alex Davis lightly by a hair in Sportsman, Bill Lairsey edging it out and leading Sportsman, and John Banks hanging on to the slimmest of leads over Jim Baker and Matt Fortin as John had won two sequences, Jim had one two sequences, and Matt right behind them with 960+ as scores for all of his sequences. Based on the raw scores, and the results of round 3 which we had yet to see, it was going to be a drag-out race to the finish to see who could edge out the win! The day ended with the handing out of the National-Unknowns for each respective class, and some friendly after-hours banter before retiring for the evening. The weather could not have been better with not nearly a cloud in the sky, and winds light and variable the entire day with temps in the 70s and low 80s. There was only one mishap of the day when basic pilot, Stuart May, inadvertently forgot to change his elevator rate switch after entering a spin, and never recovered prior to impacting the trees. An unfortunate loss but Stuart was optimistic and stated that he would be back in action soon, and attending the next New England event!
Sunday
We unfortunately awoke to rain on Sunday morning. A quick look at the local Doppler radar and the news was not good. With hopeful spirits, we headed to the SkyStreakers club in hopes of getting in the last few rounds of the contest. After an attempt to wait out the storm, and some weather updates, the group had a discussion regarding our options. After a good discussion, and the review of several weather sources, it was decided that the storm was not going to clear until late afternoon, and was actually going to get worse before that time. Sometime during the night, the weather forecast had completely changed and it appeared it was going to be moderate to heavy rain through out the day. At the conclusion of the discussion, the decision was made that we would close the contest out and get everyone on their way home as the weather was simply not going to clear. Tom and Carissa finalized the scores and prepped the awards for the presentation.
Despite the Sunday weather conditions, the overall consensus was that it was once again, a great contest hosted at the SkyStreakers R/C club in New Gloucester, Maine. They provided an amazing facility, that was run by an efficient, and knowledgeable staff! If you have yet to attend the Maine event, mark it on your calendar for next year because once you attend, I guarantee you it will be an annual trip for you!
Next up on the Northeast Schedule is Competition IMAC de St-Liguori in St-Liguori, Quebec, Canada on June 20th, and don't forget about the Scale Aerobatic NATS June 29th through July 2nd at the AMA National Headquarters in Muncie, Indiana!
--John Banks--
ARD - Northeast Region
For the Contest Director
Tom Chabot