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Nats News

July 15, 2020: RC Pylon

By Gary Freeman

I would like to start off Tuesday's coverage saying thank you to Dennis Cranfill, his parents, and Mark Parker for an amazing evening fish fry. One of the best ever.

Today we started 426. This is a Q500 class of racer where everyone runs the same engine, which is a Sport Jett .40. These engines are all very close in performance and very easy to run.

Husband and wife team of Bruce and Joanne Coffey made the long trip from California and are looking fast. It is really great watching them work together—they make a great team.

July 15, 2020: CL Combat

By Phil Cartier

Tuesday’s event had a good turnout of 18, including more than the usual suspects. It fit right in with the pleasant weather and not too much wind. The weather did get pretty unsettled by quitting time around 6 p.m.

While most of the planes and engines were F2D equipment, there were some different designs. Phil Cartier flew a Gotcha 550 with a Magnun 36 and a ten-inch propeller. It flew just fine, but a very violent collision to the motor took it out before it could show its stuff.

July 14, 2020: RC Pylon

By Gary Freeman

Monday was the electric EF1 class. There were 29 entries and most everyone had fast airplanes and great thumbs. This class is “box stock,” meaning all items are available to anyone and cannot be modified in any way. This makes the class very fun and easy for everyone. Ray Brown and Lloyd Burnham were the starters for this event; thank you both for a great job. There were a lot of great heats and tight racing. It was good to see some of the newer guys kicking some butt. You can tell they have been practicing.

July 14, 2020: CL Combat

By Phil Cartier

F2D is an unofficial event we’ve flown for quite a while now.  The cost of going to F2D contests and buying or, in rare cases, building a fleet of models with five or six engines costs quite a bit. And then there are the rules, written by committees in Europe.

But on to more fun. F2D Fast uses AMA Fast Combat rules. Often the rule about midair/crashes usually gets skipped due to a shortage of judges. If a plane crashes, it crashes. If the pit crew/pilot can get it back up safely, it’s good to go and collects more airtime.

July 14, 2020: CL Precision Aerobatics (Stunt)

By Matt Neumann

On Monday, Control Line Aerobatics (Stunt) started off with processing and appearance judging. It is also a time for everyone to get together and start to catch up on things since we last met. For most of us, that was a year ago at the 2019 Nats. I am always amazed at the diverse backgrounds of our pilots.  We have engineers, salespersons, mechanics in both cars and aircraft, professional pilots, and many more. Yet there is one thing that always brings us together— the love of model aircraft; Control Line aerobatic aircraft to be exact.

July 13, 2020: RC Pylon

By Gary Freeman

Day one of the RC Pylon Nats has come and gone. With everything going on in the world today, I think everyone here is looking forward to a safe week with friends and family doing what they love. Thank you, AMA, for allowing us the opportunity.

July 13, 2020: CL Racing

By Tim Stone

As with the rest of the world, the corona virus has affected Control Line racing at the Nats this year.  The National Control Line Racing Association (NCLRA) officers were waiting until June 10, for AMA to give the okay for Outdoor Nats to proceed. By this time, Indoor and Outdoor Free Flight had decided that they were going to cancel anyway. Not so with NCLRA—race is on! Gentlemen start your engines!

July 13, 2020: CL Combat

By Phil Cartier

Sunday saw lots more great flying in the F2D Combat Finals. The turnout was low—14 entries. All of the pilots were competent fliers with good equipment and lot of contest experience. It really showed in how smoothly the matches went and the excellent system for scoring and displaying the results.

It took 11 matches on top of the 32 matches on Saturday to get to the new winner.  Bill Maywald won first place with some great flying, not only winning matches but doing so using only three planes. Dave Fischer came in second.

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