Leonardo Silva (L) versus Ed Brzys. Did Leo's lines pull off Ed's safety thong? This is the oddest photo from Sunday.
By Charlie Johnson
AMA Control Line (CL) Combat fliers like stability. They know that when they come to the Nats, there will be a lot of competitors and the contest will always be well run. So, this year, the order of events was inverted, with Fast Combat starting off the show on Sunday, August 4. It turned out to be a blessing. Everyone started off with a full tank of energy, enthusiasm, and, most of all, patience.
Just about every match had a delay lasting for a few seconds to many minutes, but that's a good thing. Gremlins popped up in rarely used equipment. It happened to the best of them. Shutoffs triggered when they weren't supposed to, fuel lines leaked or blew off, bladders burst, and glow plugs croaked at the worst possible time. Without these delays, there would have been many matches with one person flying around and the other working on their model. There was one match where neither pilot would have been airborne!
Thanks to the casual pace, there were a few outstanding matches, some with good parts and a few, well … look in the AMA trash can. It was rather hot and humid on Sunday, and nobody was going close to 120 mph with a streamer. In terms of Foras or Nelson 36s, some were fast and some were slow. Leonardo Silva used an old Fox with a John McCollum ABC setup; it was vintage from the ‘80s, and probably had an rpm rod, too.
Congratulations to Steve Kott for a great performance and to second-place finisher Brian Stas, who lost to Steve in the final by five air points. I believe this was third-place finisher Craig Campbell's first Nats trophy; way to go, mixing it up with the big boys.
Note from AMA: Do you have photos from the Nats that you’d like to share? If so, email them to Clarissa Poston at clarissap@modelaircraft.org. Please include a brief description in your email, naming any individuals pictured in the photo(s), the name of the event that the photo(s) were taken during, and the name of the individual who took the photo(s). Your submission(s) might be posted on AMA’s Flickr page, which can be found at www.flickr.com/photos/modelaircraft/albums!
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