NatsNews

Photos by Joe Vermillion

Thursday, June 17, was the first day of the RC Scale Nats. Static judging and flying took place.

James Gibboney’s TBM Avenger takes to the sky.

By Rich Whitlow

Thursday, June 17, was another beautiful day at the IMAC Nats!

We have had sunshine and light wind for the second day in a row. There seem to be some rain and storms that may come in, but we will hope for the best for the upcoming days.

Event preview by Fred Cronenwett

(All photos taken at previous Nats.)

Welcome to the 2021 CL Scale Nats. I am excited that we can fly together once again. We will see what is new and what is the same. It seems like it has been a really long time since we have all flown together at the Nats because the 2020 CL Scale Nats was canceled due to COVID-19.

By Rich Whitlow

This first day of competition turned out to be a beautiful day to be flying! The winds were light, the temperature was moderate, and the sun was shining. There was no complaining about the weather on Wednesday, June 16!

The day started with a short pilots’ meeting. Everyone was informed, prepared, and ready to go.

The first round was a Known Round and was flown to perfection. David Moser was our first pilot in the air, and he mentioned that he wouldn’t have had it any other way!

By Rich Whitlow

Welcome to the 2021 Mike Karnes Scale Aerobatic Championships!

Tuesday, June 15, was a beautiful practice day that allowed a good number of pilots to acclimate themselves to the flying site. An extra bonus was the chance to fly in some interesting wind and for pilots to get their wind-corrections perfected.

The AMA Flying Site, and specifically Site 3, is in excellent shape and is a beautiful place to fly.

Are you thinking about attending the 2021 National Championship? Well don’t wait any longer because the $50 basic registration fee will be waived for all first-time contestants. Also, the first 100 registered pilots will receive a free 2021 Nats T-shirt! So, don’t wait—click here to register now.

The 2020 Outdoor Nats took place July 12-August 5 at the International Aeromodeling Center in Muncie, Indiana. Although the pandemic made for an interesting and complicated year, several events still took place safely, allowing competitors and AMA members to continue to enjoy our hobby.

We have created a photo gallery for this year's event. Please feel free to like, share, download, and print a few!

By Mike Unger Tuesday: Day 2 and the final day of the Heli Nats is now in the books. We arrived at the field to low cloud cover and cooler temps than expected, so we delayed the start of the final rounds of competition a few hours. This gave everyone time to charge batteries, tweak helicopter settings, and mentally prepare for the final three competition flights of the 2020 Nats. Once the clouds burned off, we started with F3C flying the F schedule. The F schedule is not only another set of maneuvers to learn, but it is also more difficult than the P schedule.

By Mike Unger

Well its finally that time of the year again: the 2020 Helicopter Nats! If you are like me, given everything that is going on in the world, I never expected to be writing about Nats this year, but here we are …

By Ryan Woebkenberg

F3K wrapped up Wednesday. Five more preliminary rounds were flown followed by a four-round flyoff for the top six finishers. The 14 rounds from yesterday and today were used to determine the contest winner.

A total of 20 pilots competed in the F3K Nats this year. That is down a bit from previous years (likely COVID related) when we typically have about 30 pilots enter. This year, we had four Juniors enter, and two of them made the flyoffs.  F3K 2020 was won by Jason Cole, with second going to Nathan Bartley, and third to Oleg Golovidov.