Many of the competitors who had flown in the Team Trials or the F2d National Championship headed home, but their ranks were filled with new faces. Many are specialists in the event and fly nothing other than Speed Limit Combat.
Today was the second day of qualifying. The best score today gets added to the best score of yesterday. Since the Open class is divided into four groups, the top five from each group get to move on to Thursday for top 20 day. The Advanced group is divided into three groups, and the top four from each group get to move on to Thursday. Those twelve get to have a flyoff to determine the winner in the Advanced class.
The weather went from being a real challenge on Tuesday to being a really good flying day on Wednesday. Control Line (CL) Navy Carrier enjoyed light winds all day with reasonable temperatures that allowed for some good flights. Where weather dominated the late-day competition on Tuesday, Wednesday saw equipment problems keeping some contestants grounded and preventing others from completing their flights.
F2d Combat at the AMA Nationals is the most prestigious of any event flown in the USA. The winner is deemed the National Champion, and Austin Minor was destined to take the top spot. He remained undefeated until his final challenger, Andrey Nadein, gave him his first loss. Austin came back from his narrow loss and took the final match. The crowd agreed, Austin was hot!
Today was the first day of qualifying. This is the day that we start to find out how everything is stacking up. We flew two flights today and the best score counts toward the best score tomorrow. The two are then added together to determine who moves on to Thursday’s qualifying.
Today we started out with Slow Survivable Combat (SSC). George Pritchett was generous enough to loan a couple of planes to Nats newcomer Andrew Shkolik. That gave us four pilots to battle it out up in the sky.
Control Line (CL) Racing started off with the two juniors, Mason and Tristan Mayer, flying some practice heats and then a 100-lap final. Doug Mayer pitted for Tristan and Richard Kucejko was enlisted to pit for Mason. Mason and Richard were declared official winners with a 6:47.37 time compared to Tristan’s 7:27.97.
Monday started out cool with calm winds. Today is practice for those not entering the Old Time Stunt (OTS), Classic, or Nostalgia 30 events taking place on the grass circles.
Electric Formula 1 (EF1) was flown today. We had 44 registered pilots in this class. The planes are replicas of full-scale F1 racers. This is a spec class run on 4S LiPos and an 8 X 8E APC propeller. This electric class is our only electric event and, just as with 424, we run both a Novice and Expert division.