RAMS R/C Club
Northwest Spring Nationals
RAMS R/C Field, Aubern, WA
Written by Gordon Anderson, NSRCA District 8 Vice President

The Pacific Northwest Spring Nationals Contest was hosted at the RAMS field and CD'd by Dave Villwock. Dave's wife Pam, Gary Pugh and his wife Debbie as well as a number of the RAMS club members did an outstanding job of running this event. Thanks!

Weather in the Pacific Northwest can be very unpredictable and can change very quickly! We experienced this at the RAMS contest June 11th and 12th in Auburn, WA. As usual we had a pretty good group of pilots show up on Friday to practice. Friday's weather was pretty good. Saturday was a very different story! We had a pretty strong wind. The wind direction seemed to be very gusty at a few feet of altitude and seemed to change a lot through the whole day. You could sure see the affect on everyone's performance! We did manage to get three rounds of competition completed on Saturday and three more on Sunday. As it turned out Sunday was the nicest day of the event, pretty calm and sunny! Boy did the flying improve on Sunday! Looks like a lot of us need to practice in the wind a bit more.

We had 2 Intermediate pilots, 7 masters, and 2 FAI for a total of 11 contestants. We ran only one flight line given the size of the group.

We were happy to see a new competitor in Intermediate, Pavel Satarik. This was his first pattern contest in D8, and made for a pretty good battle between Pavel and Bill Carder. In the end Pavel won by only 18 points! I know he had a great time and we will see him at Bill Carders contest in Molalla. Welcome to D8 Pavel!

D8's newest pilot, Pavel Satarik and his son

Mike Lance was at the field early Friday to test fly his brand new Brio! He put the maiden flight on the Brio and then performed a bit of trimming. Mike did have a few unexpected events, rudder tray coming loose, engine trouble; you know the routine when you are ringing out a new bird. Mike did get the Brio dialed in and was flying pretty good by the end of the contest. He is going to be pretty competitive with this new aircraft this season. I look forward to seeing Mike in Molalla!

Mike Lance's New Brio

Masters had some pretty good competition but Gary McCellan was flying very well and won 4 rounds and the contest. A round was also won by Lyle and Rex. Only 100 points separated 1st place from 4th place. It's also important to remember the Masters pilots are still perfecting the new 2005 routine. I expect the quality of flying and competition to increase all year.

Dennis Cone's Oly Medal taking off for another round of Masters.

Rex Lesher bought a couple of Composite ARF Impact's and had them on display. They are available in a couple of finish schemes and he had one of each. Pretty impressive ARF's for the price. Check them out at www.compositearf.com. I am sure Rex will have one of these finished and flying before the end of the season, so I will be able to report on the flight characteristics later this year. I'm pretty sure I will pick one up for a backup plane. You can never have too many airplanes!

We gathered up all the pilots and headed off to a small Italian restaurant in Sumner for diner Friday night. I think we had about 9 to 10 people total. This was one of the highlights of the contest, good food and lots of BSing about flying and building. We all got together again on Saturday night and went to a nearby Mexican food restaurant, again a great time was had by all plus we had lots of stories to tell about the days activities!

FAI was flown by Dave Villwock and Brett Bowen. Dave won this class but he better look out because Brett did a great job and just kept getting better all weekend.

Intermediate     1st Pavel Satarik 	3997.57 
                        2nd Bill Carder 	3979.39

Masters            1st Gary McCellan 	4000.00 
                        2nd Lyle C Laughery 	3964.53 
                        3rd Gordon Anderson 	3909.90 
                        4th Dennis Cone 	3900.66 
                        5th Rex Lesher 	3824.17 
                        6th Bill Bowen 		3745.24 
                        7th Michael Lance 	3588.38

FAI                  1st Dave Villwock 	4000.00 
                        2nd Brett Bowen 	3793.37

Click here to see scores for all rounds.

One thing we all need to do in D8 and all over the country is recruit more pattern pilots! We have had no Sportsman competitors or Advanced competitors in D8 all season. The future in Pattern is new Sportsman pilots and we all need to do everything we can to encourage them to try it. I am convinced that if they try it they will love it!

See you in the pits…

Click here to see more pictures!