With Jerry Budd originally handling the director chores, he was called away to Omaha, leaving our old friend Tony Frackowiak in charge. That's was fine until Tony became ill the week before the contest and actually went to the doctor. In his absence we went to plan C and Greg Frohreich was volunteered to step in. Luckily he agreed and we were able to continue, until he found out we had no sign up or score sheets. Long story short, Greg was able to get everything we needed with the help of Terry Hemmis and the contest started on time with 2 lines going strong. The breeze was blowing pretty good on Saturday - at least I thought it was blowing, if you saw my flight during the height of the wind, you'd have thought it was blowing gale force - unfortunately I lost my excuse when I talked with Mike Greear on Sunday, and found out he has a weather station set up at the field, and his instruments showed the wind blowing at an average of 8-10 mph. No major mishaps on Saturday with Greg getting in 4 rounds before 3:00pm. If it was possible, the weather was even better on Sunday - 80 degrees with virtually no wind. We had a couple of interesting incidents on Sunday - Bob Gillespie was finishing up a decent round in advanced when he came in hot for landing and had to go around, at least we thought he was just going too fast, it turns out he had little or no throttle control and had to take his plane out to far stretches of the southwest end of the field and orbit until he ran out of fuel. Turns out a servo extension came loose to the throttle servo. Later on in that same round, Noah Yaney (one of our up and coming younger flyers) began his take off run and couldn't get off the runway - he claimed he had no elevator. Well he ran off the end of the runway and tore off the landing gear and broke the prop, but mostly bruised his ego - he found out he had the wrong model entered on his transmitter.

So, enough background, here's how the classes came out - in Sportsman we had a tough three way fight with new comer Kirt Campbell beating out Mickey Chester and Mike Greear by a small margin.

In intermediate, we saw the return of our old friend Harry Gould - great to see you out at a contest again Harry. It was nip and tuck here between Mike Austin (a Miidwest transplant this year to Phoenix) and Noah Yaney. Mike finally beat out Noah by 8 points.

In advanced, we had the rematch of Bill Wallace, John Contreras and Dave Dehart who have been battling it out all year in this class. Unfortunately, when Dave arrived in Lancaster on Friday and proceeded to get his plane ready to practice, he found his wing had a crack in it which couldn't be fixed at the field and Dave was out for the weekend. But as we have seen over and over again in this hobby, Dave sucked it up and proceeded to work his but off all weekend long either calling for somebody or sitting in the judge's chair. Thanks for all the help Dave. In the end Bill Wallace prevailed over John Contreras with John suffering the same damage Dave experienced to his wing after his 5th round flight. (I wonder if there is something in the air over there in Yuma?)

In masters, Rusty Fried showed why he scored so well at the Nats by dominating the class. And finally, in FAI Greg Frohreich ended up being the only entry, which considering the problems he had getting this contest going was a blessing.

We always hope to have great turnouts at our contests and get disappointed when we don't, but the silver lining is that when there is a lower turnout, we get to go home early on Sunday. I left the field at 12:00 noon after flying 2 rounds on one line. We in the south look forward to meeting up with the boys from up north at the championships in a couple weeks in Bakersfield. You better bring your best stuff.

Standings
Sportsman
1. Kirt Campbell 4000
2. Mickey Chester 3978
3. Mike Greear 3893
4. Alvaro Dalton 3268
5. Wayne Lovett 2242

Intermediate
1. Mike Austin 4000
2. Noah Yaney 3992
3. Harry Gould 3011

Advanced
1. Bill Wallace 4000
2. John Contreras 3935
3. Bob Gillespie 3637
4. Jim Brown 2327

Masters
1. Rusty Fried 4000
2. Jim Oddino 3462
3. Lynn Burks 3448

FAI
1. Greg Frohreich 4000

The attached pictures are arranged so that the winners are shown from left to right from 1st to 3rd. In Masters, Jim Oddino is not shown.