Sunday - July 25, 2004

Nats 2004 Winch and Scale Aerotow, F3B - day 2

Photo Gallery

Woke up Sunday morning and it was raining.  No rush to get to the field, hit the drive thru at Mc D's and snagged a #3 with a large coffee, and drove out to the field.  The rain just got worse as I drove down Memorial drive.  When I arrived at the parking lot by the aerotow flightline everyone was either still in their vehicles or under the main tent, so I sat in my car and ate my breakfast.  After awhile Hartmut came by to visit and we talked about what he did for a living, a mechanical engineer by trade, working up in Michigan on automobile turbocharger projects.  He had worked on the new Corvette "Blue Devil" project, the new Z06, and obviously that got my attention.  CD Dennis Adamisin held a pilots meeting and said he was going to not call the contest, and was going to hold up because it was supposed to clear up in the afternoon.  Many people left, but I just hung around and talked to people, and went over and watched the F3B guys some more.

The F3B pilots took a break to eat lunch, so I joined them under the main tents.  As the afternoon approached you could see it was going to clear up, people started finishing up their lunches so the flying could begin.  I figured if the F3B folk were itching to fly, so would the aerotow guys so I headed back over there.

Sure enough, scale models were being assembled, some were already on the tarmac waiting to be launched.  Johnny was no where to be found at the moment, so Jack's and my tug was put into action, TK was tug pilot, I believe it was Skip that was up into the sky first.  Skip went right to work on the X/C closed course.  Capn' Jack put his Ventus up next, and I was about to fly my DG 800s when Peter Goldsmith came over and introduced himself and struck up a conversation with me.  I told him how excited I was with all this and really was impressed with the larger models Skip and he were flying.  Without hesitation he offered me a 1/3 ASK-18, and said, "you fly a 10x, right", yup.  He hooked his TX to mine with the DSC cable and transferred the ASK-18 program to my TX and said go have fun.  I must have had a blank look on my face, he said "you can't hurt it, it is simple to fly, besides, if you do it's not mine, you will have to deal with my wife."  I chuckled, and I think he was serious; he has a keen smile and accent.

The ASK-18 seemed very simple, rudder, elevator, spoilers, ailerons and tow release, that is it.  And it was much bigger than my model, this has to be good.  Johnny was back on the scene with his Pegasus and gave me a tow.  It was a very simple model to fly, heck it flew great, big slow and stable.  Shot a nice landing and asked Peter if he minds if I took it out on the X/C course, and he doesn't mind a bit.  I do and take the longest run I have all weekend, 3.4 miles.  Excellent, I am very happy with this.

Peter asks Sheldon and I if we could take him on course, his crew left in the morning thinking it would be a rain out.  Of course we are in, I am ready to take a break from flying and it was the least I could do to help crew for Peter.  Peter took a reasonable launch to about 2,500' and we got in the back of Sheldon's bright red Avalanche.  Let me tell you guys, this is the ultimate X/C vehicle.  Sheldon had two bean bag chairs in the back, great music pumped in, and a sunroof so he and a spotter could sit in the cab.  Peter kicked back into the bean bag chair, looked at me and said "Chillin' like a villain" and we were off down the road.  He flew a clean tight course, no thermal turns whatsoever, Sheldon and I just helped keep him just outside the course boundaries.  One of the cool things about the closed course was that other teams progress was evident.  You would pass a teams car, and they might pass you again.  The teams jeer at each other, and the pilots work harder.  You might even lap a team, we did when Skip stopped to work a thermal over the cemetery.  Thirty seven minutes later and countless laughs, we landed at 9.7 miles even though Sheldon was begging to drive around the corner to get 10.  It didn't even strike me that this team just won the event, I was having such a great time it wasn't even a contest, I wasn't paying attention to that at all.

We finished the day fun flying, I stuck the short wing tips on my DG-800s and was more aggressive than yesterday.  I had a couple of strange very high speed tucks at altitude so I took it back a notch, still enjoying large loops and rolls.  Other guys were tearing it up too, Skip and Dr. Dan look like they do this quite often.  People were wandering over for the awards ceremony, so we were getting an audience, the applause is always pleasant when you do something cool.

Dennis asked us to settle down and land so he could present the awards.  As I mentioned yesterday, it was Marc Gellart and team in first place in winch cross country, and Peter Goldsmith and team wins the first scale aerotow cross country at Nats.

The F3B results were not announced today, but when I spoke to Daryl later in the day and asked how he did he smiled and winked, and I knew the answer.

I think if you spoke to most of the guys that participated in the scale aerotow X/C event that they would agree that this was one of the most fun new formats that has happened in quite some time.  Peter has said that next years JR Aerotow event will also have a cross country contest, I will be there!

Here are the links to the final results:
Final Results Scale Aerotow X/C
Final ResultsWinch X/C