Can-Am Challenge Pattern Contest
Concrete Municipal Airport/ Concrete, WA
Written by Gordon Anderson, NSRCA District 8 Vice President
Pictures by Gordon Anderson and Linda Sterling

Wow! What a blast. The first annual Canadian American Pattern Challenge is history. John Foglesong was the contest organizer. John did a great job and found an outstanding location in Concrete, Washington for this contest. Concrete is located in the North Cascade Mountains close to the Canadian border, a perfect location for a Canadian American contest. Here is a little history on Concrete taken from there web site; "Early settlers came to the Baker River in 1871, originally calling the settlement on the west bank "Minnehaha". In 1890, the town site was platted by Magnus Miller, a post office was set up, and the name "Baker" was adopted. On the east bank of the river, the community that sprang up around the Washington Portland Cement Company (1905) was named "Cement City". After the Superior Portland Cement Company plant (1908) was built in Baker, it was decided to merge the two towns, and in 1909, after much discussion, the new community settled on the name "Concrete"."

First Annual Can-Am group of contestants, located in the beautify Cascade Mountains

So who won, the Canadians or the Americans? It depends a lot on how you count! We had a total of 21 contestants, 8 from the US and 13 from Canada. John made some HUGE trophies that will stay with each class's winner and each year the trophy will need to return to Concrete to be reclaimed. Intermediate, Advanced, and Masters were taken by the US and Sportsman and FAI were taken by Canada. So, if you count the winner by the most contestants then Canada won, if you count the winners by the number of classes won then the US won, but if you count the winner by who had the most fun then it was a tie. I prefer to count it by who had the most fun! The contest closed with a raffle for a bunch of prizes that John was able to get from a number of northwest hobby shops.

The contest was held at the Concrete Municipal Airport, our host was Harold Hanson. What a fantastic host and facilities! We had a pilots lounge to use for scoring and breaks. This lounge was complete with full bathrooms including showers and a full kitchen. A full size hanger was provided to store our birds in, with wall plugs every 5 feet to plug chargers into. John Foglesong cooked lunches and dinner for the fliers! It was a great site and everyone was very impressed with the facilities.

Contest and facility host Harold Hanson with one of his 20+ full-size sport planes

We planned on 6 rounds, 4 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. We were able to complete all 4 on Saturday but only one on Sunday. The weather Sunday morning was not too good. It was raining early then after the rain stopped we were left with very low clouds. Bill Kent, an FAI flier, put up a test flight to try the sky conditions. His airplane disappeared into the clouds a few times so we decided to wait for better conditions. The weather did finally clear around 10 AM and we got started.

We flew two flight lines on Saturday with Masters and FAI on line 1 and Sportsman, Intermediate, and Advanced on line 2. The two flight lines were WAY to far apart, about 1000 feet! This made it pretty tough to keep things running. Line 1 finished their 4th round early so we ran the 4th round of Advanced on line 1. This resulted in a near disaster as we had an Advanced flier turn on the same frequency as Steve Sterling on line 2. Steve was just entering the box and was able to get word to line 1 in time to resolve the conflict without incident. It was pretty exciting for a few minutes! Other than the frequency problem it was pretty uneventful, a few rough landings on Saturday due to the wind but that was about it.

Gary & Debbi Pugh with Garry & Lynn Klassen take a turn in the Judging chair

Syd Byrne was the only competitor in the sportsman class so he walked away with the win. We need to get a US competitor next year to have chance at this honor. We have enjoyed flying with Syd in the Canadian events and it was great to see him at a D8 event, hope this is a regular contest for him!

John Foglesong congratulates Syd Byrne, 1st Place Sportsman

Kody Knutdtson won Intermediate; in fact he dominated the class. He is a pretty experienced IMAC flier and this was his first Pattern competition. He only flew 4 of the 5 rounds due to some tail wheel damage on the third round of day one. He won every round he flew to take a commanding lead in Intermediate. I hope we see more of Kody, he is an outstanding pilot and a very nice young man.

Kody Knudtson, First place Intermediate

Rex Lesher and I continue our back and forth battle in Advanced! Rex won this contest by 43 points. So this means Rex and I have each won 2 D8 events with 3 left in the season. Maybe if we had flown one more round I could have got him! He better lookout because I'm going to get some practice and I should have my new plane ready by the next contest.

Rex Lesher, First place Advanced

Gary Fowler is back competing this season in Masters after a year off; its hard to stay active every season, life has a way of getting in the way! Gary Fowler and Gary Pugh had a very close contest in the end Gary Fowler won with less that a 3 point difference!

Gary Fowler, 1st Place Masters

Dave Reaville dominated FAI winning all 5 rounds to take first place. We need to get some US pilots flying FAI so we can compete with the Canadians. Dave also treated us to an artistic pattern flight at the close of competition. This was the first time I had witnessed this type of flying. It sure looked like a lot of fun and it has a lot of potential crowd appealed.

Dave Reaville calls for Bill Kent. Both are superb FAI pilots.

A lot of people helped to make the event a success. I would like to thank John Foglesong for making it happen, my wife, Meri and Debbie Pugh for running the scoring system and keeping the paperwork up-to-date, Linda Sterling for taking lots of pictures that we can look back and remember the great time we had, and all the contestants for judging plus lots of additional tasks they were called on to do for us. We had a number of local kids helping run paperwork between the two lines and the pilots lounge where the scoring was taking place plus a friend of John's running the transmitter impound.

A great event and I can't wait for next year. Remember all you first place winners, you need to bring that trophy back next year and re-win it!

See you in the pits….