I'm with Lex, though I have great respect for the Soaring Nationals as a whole. Clearly it is a great effort to put that together, and I hope everyone is having a great time.
I want to say KUDOS to Ed Franz and those others who made hand launch at that NATS happen. What a great job--11 rounds flown. Excellent! Main Point: Until there is two days of hand launch, Nats will completely miss the opportunity to be the pre-eminent hand launch event in the country. Until then, a one hand launch event will be Nationals in name but not in status. Those of us who focus on hand launch will rarely travel for a one day event. It's just not worth the effort to prepare and get somewhere. Hand launch is strong in the US, and getting markedly stronger every year. We're going to have a great team selection process for the World Championship in 2010, for the event in 2011. The final team selection doesn't have to be in Muncie, and it certainly doesn't need to be part of NATs. And I know those guys who made it to NATs HL understand why so many of our finest went to Europe. The German Open is the largest, and probably the best event in the world right now. Hard to turn those three days down, just to fly one day here. Aradhana Singh Khalsa
