Hi guys, The WSM was a very good time. Great format!!! The first 2 days... not what I would consider to be a true soaring contest (Not organizers fault, but condition oriented).. for the most part... the wind was blowing so hard, it was more of a launch and hang... and get lucky. Two HUGE notables who didn't make the flyoffs through no fault of their own - that Joe guy and Tom Kiesling. Both of them outflew the field on almost all of their flights... Nice flying guys - it didn't go unnoticed.
For those that made the flyoffs, great job guys. I approached every prelim flight as... look at the scores... how many points can I drop and still get in... I just made sure I hit the field, and get some landing points (with 80 landing points available - that's equivalent to 1 minute 20 of flight time). Yes, it was blowing hard enough that I NEVER went downwind in the prelims... well.. ok once... but that Joe guy was in my group. For those armchair pilots on the exchange who are saying that the quality of flying was sub par due to the point spread... ummmm ... @#%#@@*&~ YOU! ;-) The flyoffs were brutal - but the weather co-operated and gave us more of a soaring comp. The first 3 rounds of flyoffs were pretty much a landing contest. With only a couple of the top guys missing the ride, or taking hits. Yes, we were flying a long way out. But you really didn't want to leave the thermal due to the monster sink around them. I'm quite glad I got my eyes fixed... ;-) The 4th through 6th round was a different story. Air got brutal and light. Round 5 Mike S snuck away as the only guy to truly get out.. and pounded the group. I came in to the thermal too low to work it... but certainly had to try (I'm a first place or no place kinda guy)... and had a parking lot landing/crash/embarrassment. I've never done that before, but the stakes were too high to give up. I autographed Steve Siebenaler's truck... in more ways than one. That's the flight that gave Mike the margin. Congrats Mike on a job well done. He has been Mr. Muncie this year... winning every contest he's been there for. Arend Borst - another great competitor - Congrats! Cody - Damn kid! Nice job buddy! And then there was the rest of the top ten who kinda stunk the place up.... Special Congrats goes out to Joe Wurts for selling his house during the last 3 rounds of the flyoffs. All in all.. a good time had by all!!! See ya'll in a couple of years! D __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
