NatsNews

After a short pilot’s meeting, the first F2d Fast Combat match started right on time. Arlene Mears was taking the day off and there was a panel of new judges on the scene. There was beautiful weather too, making another perfect day for Combat.

The weather went from being a real challenge on Tuesday to being a really good flying day on Wednesday. Control Line (CL) Navy Carrier enjoyed light winds all day with reasonable temperatures that allowed for some good flights. Where weather dominated the late-day competition on Tuesday, Wednesday saw equipment problems keeping some contestants grounded and preventing others from completing their flights.

The final day of 426 was fast and furious.

Wednesday turned out to be a much more successful race day than the previous two. Quickie Rat had six Open entries and two Juniors. Everyone scored a presentable race time. FAI racing requires fixed pilot and pitman combinations, whereas in AMA racing, the entry is based solely on who enters the model.

F2d Combat at the AMA Nationals is the most prestigious of any event flown in the USA. The winner is deemed the National Champion, and Austin Minor was destined to take the top spot. He remained undefeated until his final challenger, Andrey Nadein, gave him his first loss. Austin came back from his narrow loss and took the final match. The crowd agreed, Austin was hot!

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.