A very wild day for the West Coast crew. After sitting around all day yesterday watching thunderstorms blow through, everybody was getting stir-crazy so we got out pretty early. Unfortunately, Jim Aron only made half a lap before his "up" leadout failed, completely destroying his 19-point "Infinity Prime". Complete wipe-out, no chance to get it going again. It broke right where the cable comes out of the wrapping (which was rigidly coated with epoxy). After an hour or so of recovery I got up a few flights with more-or-less proved everything worked as expected, with decent performance in some pretty stiff air. Phil "See New Nickname Below" Granderson got his new airplane going and it more or less was OK until something went funny on the last flight. We didn't have time to figure it out but there can't be much to go wrong with a 40VF, so not much concern there.
After the usual polishing, we headed over to the oneeighty building for appearance judging/pilot's meeting. Paul and Howard have come up with a completely objective system for seeding and judge selection, so no one can ever complain again that it was "rigged". Of course, it wasn't "rigged" before so it really won't change the results, but it will provide NO legitimate cause for accusations of cheating. There were a few teething issues with the system but nothing that can't be fixed. It also brought the return of the ping-pong ball flight order draw system in place of the "scramble".
After a few issues, it turned out that the pilot's meeting/circle draw took longer than appearance judging! The wait was worth it for Phil "20 Point" Granderson, as he joined the very elite 20-point club. That's right, a perfect score, and as far as I can tell, a near shoe-in for the Concours. Howard's new plane was in the second row at 19 with Windy, Dan Banjock and Roger Wildman. I was one row back at 18 with Bob "Sparky" Storick, Matt Neumann, and several others. Needless to say, we were pretty pleased with ourselves, except of course for Jim's given near-certain 19 point airplane sitting in pieces in the car.
As far as I know, no one went back out to the field afterwards, since we has 16 sustained with gusts to 30.
Brett
After the usual polishing, we headed over to the oneeighty building for appearance judging/pilot's meeting. Paul and Howard have come up with a completely objective system for seeding and judge selection, so no one can ever complain again that it was "rigged". Of course, it wasn't "rigged" before so it really won't change the results, but it will provide NO legitimate cause for accusations of cheating. There were a few teething issues with the system but nothing that can't be fixed. It also brought the return of the ping-pong ball flight order draw system in place of the "scramble".
After a few issues, it turned out that the pilot's meeting/circle draw took longer than appearance judging! The wait was worth it for Phil "20 Point" Granderson, as he joined the very elite 20-point club. That's right, a perfect score, and as far as I can tell, a near shoe-in for the Concours. Howard's new plane was in the second row at 19 with Windy, Dan Banjock and Roger Wildman. I was one row back at 18 with Bob "Sparky" Storick, Matt Neumann, and several others. Needless to say, we were pretty pleased with ourselves, except of course for Jim's given near-certain 19 point airplane sitting in pieces in the car.
As far as I know, no one went back out to the field afterwards, since we has 16 sustained with gusts to 30.
Brett
