All, I would like to send out my thanks to the organizers and volunteers for another successful nats. Although I am not able to fly in the 2M and Open class events, I am sure they will be successful too. Jim Carlton did a fantastic job of running Hand Launch yesterday. With the help of TPG's round calling CD and Jim's personal verification each round that every pilot was on the field and ready to fly (that has got to be a Nats first), the contest went smoothly with very flew glitches. I also think that Jim's choice of tasks (and as Bruce pointed out 8 minute round times for many of the rounds) were dead on. The 15 second ladder (as opposed to the common 5 second ladder) was a solid task (and fits well with he new HLG technologies). In the final rounds, Jim repeated the 4 2-minute flights in an 8 minute window task. This still required thermal finding and good thermal flying (and in some cases just making it onfield) while giving novice pilots a chance to go out and have a good deal of flights. I am also pleased with the Nats T-Shirts. I always buy a T-Shirt at every large contest I attend, but this year's Nats shirt is the best I have seen. It is dark tan with a LSF/AMA logo and a drawing of a glider on the left brest on the front. On the back is the LSF and AMA logos with 4 drawings of gliders (that look like they are thermalling). Even if you weren't at the contest, you might want to order one of these. Ryan Woebkenberg _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
