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Indoor Nats Day 3

By Don DeLoach

Day three at the Indoor Nats started with the arrival of a bunch of additional entries. The contestant count is now up to 45. Quite a few wives, moms, and daughters, too. Kids (and parents) were building P-18s under the tutelage of NFFS volunteers. It was a swirl of meetups and quick setups, then on to flying.

The color-block flying schedule meant that a flier could show up for only two or three of the five days of competition and still be able to fly all of the events on the schedule. I've heard nothing but positive feedback on this change.

The morning and midday of May 26 were filled with rubber model flying of all shapes and sizes, from AMA hyperlight stuff to half-ounce scale jobs. The Nunezes (Jonathan and his father, George) are leading the way in the scale events. Each brought about a dozen museum quality ships. Rich Adams also has a table full of great scale stuff. So does Dave Wagner, and three to four others. The scale window on Friday, May 27, should be a hoot, with three mass launches scheduled for Friday.

David Aronstein is a longtime Nats contestant who showed up with a new 4.1g Embryo. He did it to challenge Hope Finn's hyperlight Embryo. Both are incredible performers capable of 3-plus minute flights. Paul Avery will be a challenger too with a new lightweight ship covered in the new Gampi equivalent.

David also had high time of the day in Manhattan Cabin, an event that's enjoying a resurgence after a decade-plus of dormancy. There are few things prettier than a graceful Manhattan ambling through the air.

Hamish Christie showed his continued dominance of the A-6 event with his new high-aspect tandem wing Stinger. The model features a 20-inch wingspans and 1-1/2-inch wing chords. He's already got one flight of more than 9 minutes on the board.

The early afternoon saw a flurry of activity in the fast glider events: HLG, Catapult, and Jet Cat Scale. There's a big showdown brewing in HLG with no fewer than eight top contenders in Adult and several Youth. Tim Batiuk, many time Nats champ in outdoor HLG, is looking for his first Indoor HLG win. He's sitting in first place currently with a top two flight average of 70.9 seconds. He scored those on Wednesday when the air was a bit better than Thursday.

There was also quite a bit of activity in Towline glider. These Pennyplane-size models are a blast to fly but harder than one would think to get high on the line. George Morris is working out the kinks on his model, and Rick Pangell had some terrific tows once he switched to a winching technique.

Thursday's marquee happening was Ross Clements' performance in AMA Cabin, one of the oldest and most challenging Indoor events. He brought three new Cabin models to this Nats with the intent to capture the Senior AMA record. He did so easily at least three times Tuesday through Thursday, with a best flight thus far of 21:21. His model is expertly built and flies like a dream. I wouldn't be surprised to see him increase his record further on Friday/Saturday.

 

As of Thursday evening, with two days of flying to go, the current major event leaders were:

A-6  Hamish Christie: 9:26Limited Pennyplane Josh Finn:  11:06NFFS Towline Don DeLoach:  4:34.6Ministick Karen Khanagov: 9:45P-18 Brett Sanborn: 3:18Pennyplane Josiah Rose: 9:55Unlimited Catapult Stan Buddenbohm: 2:33.7HLG Tim Batiuk: 2:21.8Manhattan Cabin David Aronstein: 7:58ROG Cabin Ross Clements: 21:21F1D Josh Finn: 28:00Standard Catapult Stan Buddenbohm: 2:12.5F1L Mike Fedor: 22:06F1R Josh Finn: 33:18Hand Launch Stick Josh Finn: 16:39F1M Chuck Andraka: 23:39

 

Round Valley Site Records as of April 2022

 

 

A-6

2022

Hamish Christie

9:22

AMA Bostonian

2019

Jonathan Nunez

06:10.1

ROG Stick

2019

Michael Fedor

9:44

Chambermaid ML

2019

Rob Romash

3:19

ML Coconut Scale

2019

David Aronstein

3:35

Coconut Scale

2019

David Aronstein

3:35

FAC Dime Scale

2019

Thomas Norell

5:47

Electric

2019

Dmytro Silin

4:25

Easy B

2012

Yuan Kang Lee

22:07

F1D

2013

Bill Leppard

45:09:00

F1L

2012

Yuan Kang Lee

31:54:00

F1M

2013

Bill Leppard

27:48:00

F1N

2019

Stan Buddenbohm

3:35

F1R

2015

Bill Leppard

31:32:00

FAC Embryo

2019

Don DeLoach

9:01

FAC Flying Horde ML

2019

David Aronstein

3:18

FAC Greve/Thomp. No-Cal ML

2019

David Aronstein

3:40

FAC High Wing Peanut

2019

Don DeLoach

1:22

FAC Peanut

2019

Thomas Norell

02:29.5

FAC Scale

2019

Jonathan Nunez

02:22.5

Golden Age Combined

2019

Don DeLoach

5:58

ML FAC Greve/Thompson

2019

Don DeLoach

1:01

Hand Launch Glider

2019

Don DeLoach

02:24.6

Hand Launch Glider (J)

2019

Logan Alves (J)

0:17

Helicopter

2019

Dmytro Silin

5:53

Indoor Jet Catapult

2019

Jonathan Nunez

2:01

NFFS Towline

2019

Michael Fedor

5:25

Limited Pennyplane

2019

James Massey

14:31

Manhattan Cabin

2019

David Aronstein

7:36

Ministick

2012

Rob Romash

9:46

ML Ministick

2019

Robert Romash

9:08

FAC No-Cal Scale

2019

Rob Romash

11:24

Pennyplane

2012

Bill Erwin

15:53

Ornithopter

2019

Dmytro Silin

7:51

P-18

2019

John Mcgrath

3:48

P-18 (JS)

2019

Logan Alves (J)

3:53

ML P-18

2019

John Mcgrath

3:40

P-24

2019

Chuck Etherington

4:33

FAC Phantom Flash

2019

Hamish Christie

9:24

SCRAPS

2022

Michael Rose

6:08

ROG Cabin

2019

David Aronstein

8:37

Standard Catapult Glider

2019

Stan Buddenbohm

2:30

Standard Catapult Glider (J)

2019

Logan Alves (J)

0:35

ML Standard Catapult Glider

2019

Norman Furutani

0:50

Unlimited Catapult Glider

2019

Stan Buddenbohm

03:11.5

USIC No-Cal

2019

Robert Romash

5:32

ML FAC WW I Combat

2019

George Nunez

1:16

ML FAC WWII Combat

2019

Tom Norell

2:50

ML FAC WWII Combat No-Cal

2019

David Aronstein

3:45

 
Tags: 
nats
FAC
contest
Categories: 
Event
Indoor Free Flight
NatsNews
NFFS

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