Appearance judging and pilot meeting went as smoothly, with me getting 14 points for my plane out of a possible 20 max. It wasn’t great, but it put me in fighting range, I just had to make up for any deficits in my flight scores.

 

During the week, we had just about every kind of weather Muncie had to offer. Practice day threatened rain off and on but never did much more than mist on us. The heavy rain was saved for after hours thankfully!

 

Qualifying: We were broken up into 4 groups, each flying together in front of 2 sets of judges spread across 4 circles on the L-Pad. We flew 2 rounds per day with the best score from each day added together to see who qualified for the top 20 fly-off on the 3^rd day.

 

Day 1 of qualifying the air was so dead, you had better been back pedaling during your tricks, or you would get nailed by your planes wake. The judges have no pity on this, and score the flight path of the plane, so you had better work around it.

 

As a matter of fact, the air was so dead ( Ok, everybody “how dead was it?”) It was so dead that I was hitting turbulence from the previous maneuver AFTER doing TWO LEVEL LAPS and starting the next maneuver! That muggy dead air coupled with the extreme heat, made for a tough and uncomfortable day for flying.

 

I took 1’st place in both rounds on this day, leading the next closest guy by almost 40 points.

 

Day 2 qualifying got a little wind going later in the day, but very flyable. Someone told me the local airport measured it at 17mph on the top end during the second rounds.

 

Again, I found myself leading my group by a similar margin and qualified to fly for top 20 day.

 

Top 20 day: This is essentially a whole new contest, and you fly against the best from the other groups. Finals are a winner takes all kind of affair. You only get 2 flights, and both count, so you can’t screw up! I was pretty happy with my first flight and didn’t look at the scoreboards at all that day. This was intentional, I just didn’t want to know until it was over, and I could relax. A few people tried to spill the beans, but I just stuck my fingers in my ears and told them I didn’t want to know.

 

My second round flight was as good as my first, and I was happy with it. I finally wandered over to the score boards and saw it was a close race to first. My stomach turned a little, and I decided to clean up my stuff and load it in my van rather than hang out by the boards.

 

I was approached by a friend (Jim Silhavy) who told me I had posted a low score and lost. I took him at his word and started back to my van kinda bummed, he stopped me and told me he was joking. I didn’t know weather to hit him or hug him. I settled for shaking his hand.
 

The next cruelty foisted upon me was a somewhat disingenuous photo shoot, while they kept me distracted for the camera while I was being snuck up on from behind with a large cooler of ice water. Good thing it was hot out, I found it quite refreshing! (My wallet is still damp)

 

More MCRC members were in attendance at this years Nationals as well:

 

In Senior, our own youth Sam Niebel took all the marbles with 1^st place flying his electric modded T-Rex/P-47. Sam can continue to defend his title until he turns 18 years old I believe.

 

In Open class PA,  Sam’s grandpa Wayne Smith with his Tracer almost qualified for top 20, but passed on a flight because he thought he was already locked in for the fly-off. Unfortunately that got him bumped to 25^th when another flyer improved his score by an unexpected margin. His brother Jim Smith placed 29^th   with his Tracer.