Basin Pattern Contest
Gary Weaver’s Field, Othello, WA
Written by Gordon Anderson, Event CD and NSRCA District 8 Vice President

The first District 8 2004 pattern contest was held over the Memorial Day weekend, May 29th and 30th. The Spring Time Opening Pattern (STOP) contest was my first attempt as a contest CD. With lots of help we held a pretty successful event. It did however have a few challenges! The field we were flying from is a private flying field owned by Gary Weaver in Othello Washington. Gary allows us to use this field a couple of times a year for pattern events plus a lot of the Washington guys will travel to his field for practice.

The field is very nice, about 50 or 60 feet wide and 500 feet long grass field. Lots of parking and a big shop in the pit area with power. We are very fortunate to have this site.

About half of the pilots showed up Friday to get some practice and get reacquainted after the winter hiatus. We had a great time flying and chatting about the hobby. This is one of the greatest parts of a contest for me.

We had one depressing event happen on Friday, Gary McClellan lost his Angle’s Shadow due to combination of events. It went in pretty hard behind a small hill into a gravel pile. Everyone was pretty sure it was totaled; I gave Gary Pugh a garbage bag to help collect the remains. After about 10 minutes someone (can’t remember who) returned with the aircraft intact! It was absolutely amazing!! Gary did a careful inspection of the airframe and concluded it needed some repair work that was better done at home. The Angle will defiantly fly again! The composite design of the Angle’s Shadow is no dough responsible for its amazing strength. Gary’s dad Ray also attended the contest and Ray convinced Gary to stay and fly Ray’s Hydeout. We were all glad to have Gary fly the contest!

Dave Villwock was flying his Double Vision on Friday. I had been waiting all winter to see this biplane. It was pretty impressive to watch, Dave did an outstanding job of flying the biplane through the Masters routine. Some minor undercarriage damage and the lack of supplies to do a little minor repair work kept Dave from flying the Double Vision in the contest. Its too bad because I would have loved to see how it compared with the monoplanes, of course Dave could fly just about anything and win!

We had a new pattern pilot at this event, Jerry Green. This is a direct result of Gary McClellan’s Pattern Primer event held in April. Jerry made the trip from central Oregon with Ray to fly Sportsman. Welcome Jerry and I hope we see you at a lot more events this year. Unfortunately Jerry had no one else in his class but I think he still had a good time and learned a lot.

The weather was a bit of a challenge! Saturday started off rough and got rougher as the day wore on. Gary Pugh had an anemometer and he kept an eye on the wind speed, it hit a high of about 20 mph Saturday afternoon. It would not have been so bad if the wind was steady, what we were dealing with was a very gusty cross wind situation. This made landing a real challenge. We decided to score the landings and takeoffs 0 or 10 to reduce the possibility of damage due to trying to get a perfect position. We got started about 10:00AM on Saturday and flew two rounds by about 2:00PM. After the second round we held a pilots meeting and decided to call it a day and hope for better conditions on Sunday. Landing was a challenge all day, the gusty conditions made it very difficult to land. John Foglesong lost his Mantis on landing at the end of his first round. All in all a pretty brutal day.

Sunday was a much better day! I was surprised, it started a bit windy but by the time we started the contest, 9:00AM, the wind was pretty calm. We worked fast; with a lot of cooperation we were able to complete 3 rounds by 2:00PM. This gave us a total of 5 rounds for the contest. By the time we finished the wind was kicking back up so we were pretty lucky to pull this one off!

Our good friends from Canada, Mark Byrne and Hartley Hughson made the trip to help us start the 2004 season. We really enjoy flying with these fellas! They make most of the D8 events, real pattern animals!

Rex, Gary, Ray, and Jerry all made the 350 mile trip from central Oregon. Rex and I started flying pattern together in the 2001 season and we have been calling and helping each other every since. He and are and pretty much matched in skill level, Rex does a bit better job of calling for me than I do calling for him and that resulted in me slighting edging him out! We had a great time and I can’t wait for the RAMS contest to do it again, I’ll work on my calling skills!

Most of the population was in Masters, it kept the Advanced guys in the judges seat most of the weekend. I think Rex spent the most time in the chair, thanks Rex! Dave Villwock dominated, he is an amazing pilot! Brett

Bowen moved up late last season after he took 4th in Advanced at the NATS. Brett took second in this contest in a very close battle with Gary Pugh. We had a total of 13 pilots in the contest and setup a single flight line.

Below are the standings and the points for this contest:

It takes a lot of effort to organize and execute a contest, I learned that this weekend. I could not have done this with out the help of my wife Meri. She was the score keeper and she feed everyone lunch both days! This was a heroic effort! I think everyone had a great time and I look forward to a very active season with 7 events in D8 this year, I think this is a record! We are also planning on attending two Canadian events so we will be busy!

Next contest is Dave Villwock’s event at the RAMS field in Auburn, can’t wait to mix it up again!