By Stan Alexander (onawing4602@att.net)
After a beautiful Saturday, Sunday dawned with cloudy skies and the threat of thunderstorms. We were out early scrambling to cover models under tents and pull sides down on canopies. The storms then sort of sideslipped the AMA site and we didn’t receive more than a few sprinkles.
Round 3 started around 8:30 a.m., and the conditions were great for flying competition. Several pilots put in their best flights of the weekend.
Pilots got things together mechanically and mentally to finish the two rounds of flight in great shape. One modeler, Randy Adams, who had ignition issues all Friday and Saturday, finally gave up on one airplane and brought the other one to win first place in Sportsman class with his Fokker D.VIII to win Sportsman.
The Flying Razor, as it was called in World War I, was built from a combination of a Balsa USA kit and parts from Glenn Torrance. Construction is balsa, plywood, and aluminum. The 88-inch wingspan model is powered by a G-26 engine.
Why do so many scale modelers use Zenoah engines? Well, they are shorter than other engines, and with a limited cowl space in which to mount an engine, it helps to have a shorter total length.
Open Scale is where you can finish someone else’s model or buy it and detail it, add your documentation, and go enter a Scale class. They are static judged just like in Sportsman, Expert, and Team Scale. Ted Roman finished in first place with his 1/3-scale Balsa USA Piper Super Cub in Belgium Air Force colors. The 98.7 static score was impossible for the others to overcome. Add two great flights, and it was all over in this class. Jason Bauer finished second in Open Scale with a BVM F-16, while Tim Dickey from Arizona finished third with his unique radial-powered J-3 Cub.
Jack Buckley continued his dominance in Expert class with his 1/3-scale Tiger Moth. The huge Moth is pretty much scratch-built except for the wing ribs. Mike Barbee finished second with his big Beechcraft King Air, featuring electric motors with a 5,000 mAh 6-cell battery pack for each engine. The big twin flew great with a few bumps on the last flight. Larry Folk topped out in third place with his veteran 1/3-scale Super Cub.
In Designer Scale, Jack Buckley once again flew his Mini-Max ultralight airplane to a first-place finish, while Hal Parenti and Al Kretz had mechanical problems that pretty much took them out.
Joe Vermillion won in Fun Scale Novice with the 1/3-scale Fokker D.VII built from a Balsa USA kit—imagine that! Johnny Hunt was second with his Supermarine Spitfire from a Phoenix ARF. Daniel Rodrigues rounded out the top three with his Cessna 170, which flew very smoothly.
Fun Scale Open was a hard-fought class with 19 entries. By the last round of flight competition being over, there was a three-way tie for second place between Will Barenger, Jeremy Arvin, and Dan Landis. A tiebreaker had to be used, with all three of these pilots having a final score of 103.250. Steve Eagle was so close with a score of 103.125 and finished fifth with his Fokker D.VII.
The others in the tie finished as follows: Will Barenger second, Jeremy Arvin third, and Dan Landis fourth.
Terry Nitsch finished first in the class with his MiG-15, which was built from a BVM composite kit and electric ducted-fan powered. The 60-inch Soviet fighter also featured speed brakes, brakes, and drop tanks. Terry uses a Horizon Hobby Spektrum DX18 radio system to control the model, and he won the class by .25 of a point!
We would like to thank all of the judges, officials, administration, and the AMA grounds crew for all of the work they put into this Nationals Championships.
Sponsors: NASA, ZAP Glue, Modeler’s Reference, Toys Forever Models & Hobbies, Fellowship of Christian Modelers, Balsa USA, Brodak Manufacturing, Frank Tiano Enterprises, Falcon Props, Down and Locked, Electrodynamics, Tru-Turn, Horizon Hobby, and Barbee Concrete.
See you next year and fair skies and tail winds.
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