Day 1 results, entries, anything?

Is there any one with a clue to where we can get some info on the Nats?
Chris...

A report by cellphone indicates much of round one, if not all of it, was wiped out by high winds. There are also reports that Fancher's Special Edition folded a wing in the hourglass.

Beyond that, nothing is known. More realtime reports should filter in today.

This isn't going to help much but I'm visiting by cell phone also with some of my buds that are on site.

Round one was delayed because of winds and then it was decided to terminate. Round one scores will not be counted and today looks like very bad conditions also. Don't have a clue as to what they will do.

Combined entries in Adv and Open are 128 and a number of the foreign entries did decide to stay and compete. Each of the groups is comprised of both Adv and Open fliers with the judges not knowing (unless personally acquainted) which group an individual contestant might be in.

Ted did fold the wing on his plane while practicing. Don't know if he has a backup or not. There were also a number of other planes destroyed either in practice or in competition but with my CRS and not taking notes while I was talking on the phone, I won't try to tell anyone the specifics or numbers.

John and Steve,
Thanks very much. At least something is known by those of us not in attendance.
Chris...

Uncle Jimby told me that Ted did in fact take a back-up with him to the Worlds Event so he's not out of the running for the NATs.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-15-04 AT 06:11 PM (CDT)
 
>Uncle Jimby told me that Ted did in fact take a back-up with
>him to the Worlds Event so he's not out of the running for
>the NATs.

Ted chose not to fly it. The new model crashed due to some uncertain failure during a vertical 8 in a moderately strong wind. I was looking right at it when it crashed, and it looked like a classic line/leadout failure from the outside. Got close to the bottom, and then it "bunted" hard outside and went in. Subsequent examination showed controls to be intact, so best guess is a lower spar failure driving the controls hard over "down".

Wednesday's flying was cancelled, and the scores cancelled from completed flight, due to excessive wind. It was pretty ugly, not as bad as last year at it's worst, but last year there had already been a "filtering" process by virtue of it being finals day. Several models had crashed (Pat Johnston and Don Hutchinson among others) and Billy had a real "hold on and hope flight" right before it was called. If the current W/C has trouble, what chance do the rest of us have? I actually had a very good flight in, but that was before it got really ugly.

So today we flew two flights and took the best single flight for qualifications purposes. It was pretty much just as bad by the end of the day. It was not a typical qualification - I was *really* sweating it out after posting a good score early in the day. It was *much much* more difficult to qualify than usual - something, truth be told, I really haven't had to worry about in many years. Actually, except for the flying, I had a pretty crappy day, and somehow managed to be late for *both* of my flights after never having a problem before. There were numerous crashes - Delaney (not terminal), one of the Brazilians, I think, and Jim Pollocks remarkable "land shark" flight - broke prop on takeoff, rolled around for a few laps until he nosed it over to try to kill it. This created a semi-shaft run while it still managed to roll around in a powered ground loop. Paul went out to grab it, but it turned towards him and sort of chased him. He got his foot caught in the lines, but before it could wrap up his leg, the wind flipped the model on it's back.

Thank you Brett for taking the time to post what is going on up there!

Brett,

Thanks for the report. Hope you or someone else gets a chance to give up a bit more detail, but I know it's hectic. Sad to hear about Pat crashing. It's his first Nats, I think.