JULY 2011

I am going to start with a bit of a summary of the Scale Aerobatic NAT’s just concluded. Gil Majors, Curtis Cozier, Phil Vance did an exceptional job and it was a good event for those pilots that made the effort and popped for the expenses to come. Many many rounds were flown and on the final day pilots had to take a portion of their earned points and move them forward into the finals, then two unknowns and two knowns were flown to go with that score. Ray Fulks and I were the representatives from the South West and we did a lot of judging as there were only 5 non flying judges at the event. Contestant judging was unavoidable and worked okay. The two pilots from the South West were Unlimited Todd Bridges flying an Extreme Flight 300 with DA 200 and Andrew Taylor flying in Advanced with his ML 300. I judged both of them several times and they were flying well and I thought they represented our region very competently. Andrew actually took third place in Advanced and Todd was a very respectable 7^th place…I think. Ray and I could not stay for the final half day of flying as we needed to meet up with an airbus in Indianapolis. The banquet this year was held at the Educational building on the AMA property and it was just great. The AMA allowed all of our troops to go through the museum in a special showing right up until the banquet started….it was very cool looking at the history of modeling with our buddies. The weather was more than cooperative with mid 70’s and mostly clear skies, no heavy wind and just a little rain on the first day. The national champion this year was Kurt Koelling in Unlimited and he was tested by David Moser, Brian Sanik, Will Berninger, Frank Noll, and Nicolas Pinzon. The dominant aircraft at the contest was the Carden Aircraft coupled with a DA 200. Dave Villwock from the NW had and interesting composite 300 from a plug he built with prototype wings from Carden….it flew well too. No biplanes came with the 35 pilots that attended. I was a bit disappointed at the turnout especially from the surrounding states and the South Central region. A lot of pilots choose not to come for reasons that I can only wonder about.

One announcement that got a big reaction was the proposal from President Wayne Matthews concerning the possibility of a 2014 World Championship in the United States. We have 14 affiliate countries that use all of our sequences both known and unknown, rules, schools, SCORE program and instructional materials including the Online Flying and Judging Instructional Program that I was very involved in producing. Again several key individuals from the South West provided the expertise for this program that is used worldwide now and will be used into the future: Steve Dente and Mark Bidar, both friends of mine from San Diego were absolutely the essential experts that put it together. If you have not taken the time to use it you should because we need, always need, competent judges at every event. Muncie does have the infrastructure and support for this large an event however there are many questions concerning the cost to travel with airplane to the United States etc. The concept I would think might be considered would be like the Olympics….every 4 years, that way people can hold proper national events and save up money for the event.

Speaking of events we now have quite a few in the books in the South West Region. I am proud to say we are looking at about 11 now with 8 more to go and of course the Tucson Aerobatic Shootout will be back this year with Tony Russo as the CD and many other people stepping up to make this happen in 2011, in the absence of Michael Marcellin.

The latest event deserves mention here also as it was extremely well attended and organized and promoted. Model Airplane News covered the Pomona Valley (Prado) Model Airplane Club IMAC event held on July 2 and 3^rd in Chino. 46 pilots enjoyed all the finer touches that come when Phil Goodwine and his team put together an event. Ten unlimited pilots fought it out for TAS points and it was a pretty good showcase of the younger guys stepping up their game once again. Steve Nelson is still king of the old guys but he could only manage a 5^th place…..and there were some missing youthful gladiators that might have come but did not. It will be tough to qualify in this class this year because of the no contest last year and the pent up desire to achieve excellence that permeates this class and the desire to make it into the Invitational class. One of the key ingredients that all pilots want in a contest is fair judging and Phil’s desire to achieve a higher level of fairness is to use 3 judges on all lines. Outstanding idea that was very smoothly accomplished and I speak from much experience…..this is not an easy job developing a matrix of judges and scribes for a large contest. Phil deserves a lot of credit for pushing this in the South West.

Our contest schedule has seen some modifications this year and will continue to be looked at to optimize for the majority of pilots that fly in the South West. Camarillo is up next in California and the Albuquerque contest had to be cancelled so take note of that and be sure that you understand that qualifying for the TAS usually ends in this month. Top three contests have been used in the past for the TAS. In the South West region it is the top five contests and of course the last contest of the year is in early November at Hemet in California. We are hoping that many of you will make this contest. With that I would say practice hard, come to as many contests as you can and come prepared to have fun and enjoy the world of scale aerobatics.

Tim