2023

Today we started the first day of 426. The plan is to fly six rounds of qualifying.

The qualifying/finals format presents different strategies for competing, and many are just trying to make the finals. It proves to be fun and engaging for all. The two final rounds of qualifying will be flown on Wednesday morning.

Today was the first day of qualifying. This is the day that we start to find out how everything is stacking up. We flew two flights today and the best score counts toward the best score tomorrow. The two are then added together to determine who moves on to Thursday’s qualifying.

Today we started out with Slow Survivable Combat (SSC). George Pritchett was generous enough to loan a couple of planes to Nats newcomer Andrew Shkolik. That gave us four pilots to battle it out up in the sky.

Tuesday started out quite nicely, with a light breeze blowing right down the deck. It made takeoffs quite easy, and it was not too challenging for slow flight. Later in the day, the wind continued to pick up, reaching gusts of 24 mph officially.

Race day started off with the two juniors, Tristan and Mason Mayer, flying qualifying heats with their AMA Goodyear models. They were basically flying their Sport Goodyear models on the longer 60-foot lines, so the race times are quite presentable for the equipment that they used. Their races were uneventful, Open fliers take note.

Control Line (CL) Racing started off with the two juniors, Mason and Tristan Mayer, flying some practice heats and then a 100-lap final. Doug Mayer pitted for Tristan and Richard Kucejko was enlisted to pit for Mason. Mason and Richard were declared official winners with a 6:47.37 time compared to Tristan’s 7:27.97.

Monday started out cool with calm winds. Today is practice for those not entering the Old Time Stunt (OTS), Classic, or Nostalgia 30 events taking place on the grass circles.

Electric Formula 1 (EF1) was flown today. We had 44 registered pilots in this class. The planes are replicas of full-scale F1 racers. This is a spec class run on 4S LiPos and an 8 X 8E APC propeller. This electric class is our only electric event and, just as with 424, we run both a Novice and Expert division.

Each heat of RC Combat lasts five minutes with a 90-second launch window prior to the call of start Combat. In those 90 seconds, the pilot must start their engine and be up in the air with a fully deployed 30-foot streamer. Once Combat starts, everybody converges on each other and a furball develops.

The final day of the 2023 Team Trials looked to be over by early afternoon, as just a mere twelve contestants remained. The short day turned out to be a very long affair, thanks to a record number of re-flights.