Ted Fancher · Jul 21, 2004 12:02 PM
#0 sourceI noted several questions regarding my decision not to fly the old original Trivial Pursuit in the US Nats following the inflight failure on the Special Edition. The reasons are pretty simple.
First, logistically. The S.E. was destroyed the first day of qualifying. I had a late draw and was flying an engine test flight at a site away from the official site. When the airplane was destroyed it was already time to leave for the first round of qualifying.
Second, equipment preparation. The T.P. hadn't been flown to speak of for several ... if not many ... years. I flew it a month or so before just to see if it still knew how and then simply threw it in the van for the WCs. If the failure had happened during the WCs there is no question the T.P. would have been brought out of retirement. The PA .61 in the T.P. has only run on Sig Champion fuel and I had none available on short notice. The S.E. used the RoJett .61 which I ran on Powermaster RC fuel ... mostly synthetic. This is not recommended for the PAs and I wouldn't have used it in the .61.
The final and most persuasive argument against trying to get the T.P. in the air was personal. Brett Buck had just spent the better part of two weeks doing any and everything I could ask of him to help me effectively participate in the WCs. This week was to be a joint effort for both of us and we were both looking forward to competing hard to gain the top twenty and ultimately the final five. When the S.E. broke the only way I could have gotten prepared to fly was to have abandoned Brett to his own devices or ... even worse ... asking him to cut short his own preparation to assist me. That wouldn't have been fair and I never considered doing so.
I went to the field to help him fly and advised the administrators I had scratched. Whether or not I had anything to do with it, Brett's ability to concentrate on his own preparation and patterns yielded great results and I'm happy as a clam to have been his tool box caddy while he did so.
Ultimately, as the qualifications panned out--with the blown out first round, etc.--I probably could have pleaded my case with Warren Tiahrt to allow me to "unscratch" and fly in the eventual "sole" round of qualifying on Thursday. I might have been able to convince him but past experience has shown that universal acceptance of such a decision by the competitors would have been unlikely. It seemed better to spend a couple of days watching patterns (something I never do when competing because it "works" on my head). This was instructive and taught me a lot that I had never learned due to that paranoia. I'll probably sit down and write something about that experience for STUNT NEWS.
Ted
