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