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The day began much like yesterday, waiting for the ominous weather to pass us by, and it did! Launching the Pike Perfect on the winch is a nice stress-free experience, straight up and smooth.

What a week it was at the 2025 Nats! I have to hand it to the team that ran the show.

The Cross Country portion of the Nats got off to a rainy start at Monroe Central High School in beautiful Parker City, Indiana, postponing our day for a few hours. We, of course, sat under the pavilion telling tall tales as the moisture fell.

Flying at the AMA/LSF soaring Nats has been the highlight of my flying season for several years now. I spend two weeks camping and relaxing under the sunny/starry Indiana sky. I made it out after years of “next year, I’ll go next year.” Now, it's every year…because “Glider Camp” is awesome!

Today was the final day of the 2025 RC Scale Nationals. Yesterday of course, it was cut short around noon by excessive winds, occasional heavy downpours, and a thunderstorm or two. There was even a brief power outage around 3:00 PM.

The storms moved out and we had great flying weather to finish up the AMA events and fly Round 1 of the F4B team trials.

We knew the weather could be problematic today. However, we were hoping for the best. Arriving at the field around 7:30 AM, the skies were clear with a breeze. By the 8:00 AM pilot meeting, the had wind picked up to a stiff direct crosswind and was forecast to become even stronger.

The summer weather in Muncie can unflyable due to high wind, and the weather on July 12th was one example. The pilots decided not to fly due to the high-wind conditions. So, the decision was made to return to the flying site on Sunday morning to finish off round 1 for the AMA events.

On Friday morning, the group was greeted with warm temperatures and light winds. So far this week, we have been very lucky in that when we were flying the weather cooperated. Today would be no different.

This was our last day of Speed. We would usually fly three classes of Speed. But alas, two of the fliers were so worn out from the day before, they elected not to fly Class C Speed and Class D Speed. Three other competitors wanted to fly their Fast Jet models, and that was all the noise you could hear coming from Site 2.