F2B Team Trials final results

Final results:

2002 F2B Team:
1 Werewage
2 Lee
3 Fitzgerald

Junior Gruber
Junior (alt) Stewart

4/1st alt Fancher
5/2nd Alt Smith
6 Rich
7 McMillan
8 Buck
9 Neumann
10 Contrata

Conditions were good, moderate temps with the light wind over the crown of the runway, meaning 4 feet looked a lot better than 6. Occasional thermals as well in the second and third rounds.

The flying was, not surprisingly, of the highest order from top top to bottom, including the juniors.

Billy was a mortal lock as the winner, no one else was even close. Todd was very solid in second. Third was somewhat up for grabs between David, Bill Rich, Randy, and Ted. Bill and David looked like the real contenders, but as it turned out, David came up with a score when he needed it, and Ted and Randy both ended up ahead of Bill. Ted was a big surprise after the near-disastrous first round flight, and continuing engine run issues.

In junior, Rob and Kevin were very close, swapping the lead in the first two rounds, and generally fly as well as anyone else. Rob edged out Kevin for the win. Both flew well, I would guess that either would have been in the teens in Open at the NATS this year.

It was a very strange day, with a number of brain-fade type errors. Ted looked like he had a disaster in the first round when he almost crashed in the wingover. I almost crashed when I had a thermal blow through during the outside rounds and just didn't correct it due to incompetence. Mine was about 3", Ted's was around 12", so I was 4 times better! With everyone shooting for 4' or lower, there were a number of close calls throughout the day.

The worst incident of the day was the loss of Matt's airplane in the third round. This was nothing to do with flying, it was a structural failure of the center-section joint when just going over the top in the wingover. This was a disappointing end to a remarkably improved performance on Matt's part. This was no fun-fly, this was the Team Trials, and Matt was the real deal, edging out some name fliers for a qualification spot.

Super job to all of the C/L flyers. Matt great Job. Mr.Lee WOW.
Hope to make it there next year......

What a fantastic week, ending in two fantastic days of competition. There are so many stories to be told, maybe it should be written into an article for Stunt News. On both days of competition, it was never over until the last score was posted. For qualifications, slots 7 through 12 changed throughout the day. On the final's day the drama continued. It was no surprise that Bill Rich would be in contention for a team slot after his flights at the National's, but it was Randy Smith who was really coming on strong. Going into the third round, Randy had a very good shot at a place on the team. Randy, flying his new Katana, had a bad break when his solid lines locked up making subtle contol inputs impossible.

My thanks to all of the Judges for an outstanding job, and for all those who helped put together this outstanding event, and my congratulations to Billy, Todd, David & Rob.

Curt "Ready for the Fourth Round" Contrata

>What a fantastic week, ending in
>two fantastic days of competition.
> There are so many
>stories to be told, maybe
>it should be written into
>an article for Stunt News.

Have you ever seen more good flying, and more odd happenings, at a major contest? It may be that I was just all messed up on cough syrup, but there seemed to be an inordinate amount of strange things going on. With near-perfect weather and the high quality of the participants (and the terrain/wind direction tempting everyone into a limbo contest), you'd expect the great flying, but there were a lot of weird incidents.

One just had to be there to see it all in person. I think each of us had at least one thing happen. Well, maybe not Billy.

I posted some pictures on the Yahoo forum:

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/controllineflyingforum

Indeed it was a dandy contest. I flew pretty well, but pretty well was way off the pace with that group. There was some mighty good stunt flown. As always, we shall send an excellent F2B team to the World Championships. Many thanks to Brett, David, Ted, Windy, and others who helped me there.

>(and the terrain/wind direction tempting everyone into
>a limbo contest)

It did seem like 5' was very low from the crown, a Limbo contest is a good description of how it felt. As for the Terrain, I for one hate that high spot in the pavement on circle 4 I kept finding on Sunday! And yes Randy, I'll input a touch of down at just the instant it touches down and stay with it till the very end from now on.

Gotta agree, in almost 50 years of doing this sort of thing this team trials probably included the highest average level of excellent flying I've ever encountered. From Billy down to the last man there was simply no "ordinary" flying to be found. When a five time National Champion and former World Champion can't quite qualify for the finals you know some pretty good stuff is taking place.

I expect the nearly perfect flying conditions for both days helped to make the consistent excellence possible but the guys doing the handle twisting had to have the ability to take advantage. Well done to all.

I'd like to add a couple of personal observations about a couple of flyers who, in one case, surprised me and in the other seemed finally to have gotten the recognition for what has been darn good flying for some time. Let's take the latter first...

Although I try not to watch the "top" flyers fly (too intimidating) I do watch some who we don't ordinarily expect to finish in the running. One who has been making me nervous for some time has been Randy Smith. The tendency for many of us seems to have been to think of Randy as only the guy who provides the terrific equipment we've all come to appreciate. Oh, does he fly, as well? seems to have been the watchword.

Well, let me tell you that I've been a keen appreciator of his flying for several years and this event seems to have been the occassion in which his skill made itself known. Tight, precise and impressive. His new Katana seems trimmed to a fair-thee-well and, not surprisingly, his P.A. .61 is a fire breather. Well done, Randy. You didn't surprise me.

The other special individual is closely associated with our host...Leonard's son, Matthew. Although the final act of Matt's Team Trials play was a tragedy, the events leading up to it were made more for accompaniment by the Rocky theme. What a huge improvement in performance in only a matter of weeks since the Nationals.

In early July Matt looked like a very good Advanced flyer or a pretty decent Expert but his pattern was nothing to give the top boys any anxious moments. In the intervening weeks some significant trim changes to his trademark Stuka and a new dedication to precision in shapes and sizes turned his previously innoccuous presence into one with which to be reckoned. Previously 60 degree or higher tops were tight at 45 degrees and wishy-washy bottoms were locked in at five feet as good as anyone save perhaps Werwage.

Both Randy and now Matt clearly have a picture of what this stuff is supposed to look like and that is a huge part of the battle for being consistently highly placed. Once you've seen and digested the "look" of the pattern it becomes much easier to adjust when things get out of whack.

Matt's got a bit of work ahead of him to get that Stuka replaced but he should do so quickly so as to build on the impetus that his great effort in Muncie should provide for next year.

It was fantastic seeing the terrific young flyers from Todd to Matt to Curt, to Kevin and Robbie. Once in a while it gets easy to worry about where the next great flyers are hiding.

Looks like they ain't hiding any more. Well done to you all.

>Although I try not to watch
>the "top" flyers fly (too
>intimidating) I do watch some
>who we don't ordinarily expect
>to finish in the running.
> One who has been
>making me nervous for some
>time has been Randy Smith.
> The tendency for many
>of us seems to have
>been to think of Randy
>as only the guy who
>provides the terrific equipment we've
>all come to appreciate.
>Oh, does he fly, as
>well? seems to have been
>the watchword.

Randy also overcame an additional difficulty. He was up and ready to go when the "incident" with the car guys happened. This took about 15-20 minutes to straighten out. This couldn't have made it any easier, and I know it bothered him since he was talking about it in the pits afterwars. It was a really bad break.