Wow wow, wow... is all I can say. Having participated as part of team Schow, and my first time attempting XC, first time flying from the back seat of a car, and the first time I knowingly and willingly chose to land my 5 meter Ka6e in a soybean field, all I can say it was addicting! I towed some, spotted for team Jr as Pete Goldsmith did over 9 miles and 6 (I think) laps around the closed course with his 7 meter Nimbus 2. This ship cooked around the closed course so fast Pete had to add camber so we could keep up with it. The large modern scale ships can really move. I attempted the traditional XC course early in the day before it was known by all that we could fly the inner circuit. On my second attempt the very thick airfoiled K6 was clocked at a blistering 6 mph ground speed in the windy conditions. What a hoot! At little over 800 feet I chose to go for it and left the safety of the AMA site. The K6 is well worn so it was no great risk to take it to the fields. It flys and lands very slowly and while a great thermal ship, won't penetrate worth beans in any wind. Who cares, this was a blast. I made all of one mile before descending into 3 feet of cushy green soybeans. I also had a 5.4 meter Puchacz aerobatic ship along, and while not nearly optimized for XC work i did get a flight or two in. I planned on doing the inner circle with it on sunday, but alas, the weather said no way. I want to add more comments but I want to make this message not too long. (too late) Thanks to Jack Strothers, Dennis Adamison, Dave Corvin, teamates skip, antonio,tom,and tom, and and all the LSF and AMA folks who made this happen. There were scale ships in larger numbers than previous years, and they were flying, not sitting on the ground waiting for static judging. There are a lot of possibilities with this format. Using a closed course, however it developes, is the way to go to attract more scale involvement. There are safe land outs all around the course, ample opportunity to fly as much as you want, and an exhilerating spirit of flying for a purpose instead of simply standing in one spot. This was a great start to a future where large scale ships can come to the NATS, fly a lot, compete, and not risk landing out in risky terrain.
I will put responses and more comments on my web site when I get home. At Dennis Adamison's suggestion, I will put up a page on my site to collect ideas on how to develope this for the next time two years hence. John Derstine, on the way back home... > I spent the weekend at Muncie trying to help out Skip > Schow's XC team. The team didn't have a name, so my RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
