This past weekend in St. Louis was as nice a soaring weekend as I guess I have ever seen, it was not give me air, but just three beautiful days.
Friday was a brain dead day for air, we flew some HL and set a couple of winches for fun flying. I wish that we would have been somewhere where XC was doable, an LV trip would have been an hour flight at most. Saturday started with a bit of a northeast breeze and the sun was out bright and early, Glauco Lago, the MVSA equipment whiz, and others started to set eight winches. This was thanks to SOAR, LOFT, MSL, and individuals who took the effort to bring winches so we could have a great MOM contest. This was MVSA's first major MOM effort and I think that we have converted another club to the gospel. The folks started to arrive, from eight states to be exact, and we were ready to start. Event Director Mark Nankivil greeted the group (about 30 each day) and I laid out the contest, we flew six rounds Saturday (75 minutes of flight time) and what seemed so easy on Friday started to look like a bit tougher task come Saturday. matter of fact, there was some real carnage in the ranks of the big boys that changed the entire contest from that point on, except for Fly'in Brian. Brian, and his Ava just kept putting up times and landings to the delight of Iva. In the end, Brian put in excess of 300 points on Jim Frickey and 400 points on the third place flier. Sunday was a near carbon copy of Saturday, we were lucky enough to have left the winches set and they were on the money. The days lift was more uniform and there was a lot less huge swings in standings Five rounds were flown (53 minutes of flight time) an I think that the top group made all their times pretty much all day. Lift did cycle though as I know of a few folks that landed out being caught in some monster sink. As might be expected, the scores were much tighter all the way down the line. Jim Frickey, a perennial winner here was tops and Jim Bacus was second. Overall Master Champion for the Gateway Open, as has been noted was Brian Smith, second was Jim Frickey. The Sportsman Overall Champion was Larry Ruble and second was Bob Burson. Go to www.mvsaclub.com/GO05fin.htm and you can see the scores. Coming soon will be pics too. A special thanks go to Glauco Lago (equipment), Mark Nankivil (in town ED and despite having a cold), Art Frost (Saturday Scoring), Jim Crook (Sunday Scoring), Bob Kieler (Cook), and a bunch of others who helped in keeping the show running. To my friends that helped us out with equipment and manpower, a big attaboy. Marc Gellart 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
