By Phil Cartier
The first day of the 2019 F2D Team Trials had plenty of interesting incidents. A total of 28 fliers registered and flew. It’s not a record number, but a good turnout, nonetheless.
About half of the matches had loads of very intense, close-quarters flying. Actually, there really were not many cuts. The pilots were so good at evading them that it was hard to run up a big score.
The most interesting part happened at the end of the second round. There were three matches that had to be reflown. All three reflys ended in time. Pilots got out another four or five new planes and flew round two. That ended in three tied matches and more broken equipment. Finally, after two rounds, all three matches had clear cut wins.
Day 2 started midway through round 5, which quickly cut the field to 15. Only two pilots, Bill Maywald and Chuck Rudner, still had just one loss. After a short on pilots but longer on time, round 6 reduced the fliers to 10. The pace of the matches slowed further due to the number of midairs. Pilots were digging deep into their cache of planes.
Round 8 had all of the pilots for the team (6) in the 8 fliers. The first match got the pilots the first yellow warning cards of the contest. Radik Magzianov and Dave Fisher got into some arm wrestling and were warned for rough flying.
We needed to sort out the team. The last round only had to turn out three pilots directly for the team and the three alternates—who usually flip coins to determine the first, second, and third alternate.
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