I am happy to say that ECHLGF 2003 was a success! I hope all/most of the participants will agree with me.
We had very reasonable weather on Saturday - overcast but no rain, and just enough lift to make the tasks a little difficult but doable. The weather on Sunday was great - sunny, warm, light clouds, plenty of lift. Almost too easy, but no complains. There was still plenty of sink to make it difficult at times. Only in a couple of rounds during the entire contest we had several pilots who maxed out the task resulting in several 1000 scores in one flight group. Most of the time there was a sufficient spread of points. But at the same time the standings changed constantly throughout the contest which made it more interesting. Until the very end it was not clear how the final standings would turn out. Russ Bennett was leading after the first day of the contest. Phil Barnes was the first going into the fly-offs. In the last round of the fly-offs Phil Barnes unfortunately landed out on a 4min flight, which allowed me to advance to the 1st place. We had many memorable moments during the weekend, some very happy and some not. Russ Bennett did some exceptional flying and was at or near the top of the score table most of the weekend. In one of the rounds, when one big thermal passed the field giving everybody an easy 3min max, and then a big sink area settled in, Russ took a single low level thermal and kept riding it until he climbed out and took another max flight. All of us were watching him and hesitated to join him in that weak thermal saving the throws in hopes for a better thermal, but all we found was more sink. In another round we saw Adam Weston land out only about 2 feet short of the field boundary after a very difficult 4min flight! That was quite an upset for Adam, as he was probably going to win that round. In the last round of fly-offs, Phil Barnes and Doug Pike both landed their planes in the woods after they could not come back to the field through the sink. All in all, we all had lots of fun this weekend despite all those usual upsets that happen in any contest. On Saturday after an unexpected early finish of the planned 6 rounds, everybody wanted to fly more, and Tom Kiesling quickly organized an F3B speed task event. That was a great fun and laughs continued for an hour or two while pilots took turns flying the "speed course". It was very much like a real F3B, with 2 line judges, no-fly zone, penalties, wild course entries, even wilder turns, turn cuts, very fast 2 lap speed runs with very slow 2 lap finishes, and many unfinished 3.5 lap runs :-) The lunches organized and delivered to the field by Linda Proseus, wife of the contest director Dick Proseus, were fantastic. Everybody agreed again that the great lunches are yet another reason to attend this event next year. The raffle prizes included 2 kits, one XP-3 from Denny Maize and Phil Barnes, and one Taboo XL, also many small items - servos, gyros, gyro switches, batteries, video tapes, etc, from Doug Barry (our main sponsor), Dick Proseus, and Quiet Flyer magazine. If I forgot a sponsor, I promise to mention all names again on the web-site when I post the pictures! The kits were won: XP-3 by Kevin Sharbonda (after Denny Maize won it and graciously declined to take the prize!), and Taboo XL by Ken Marks. We had a minor mishap with the scoring program, or to be more accurate with the assumptions about its capabilities. The program worked great for 1 day contests, but I could not figure out how to make it work for a two day contest (and it could only do 8 rounds in one day). So we had to resort to manual scoring on the second day which introduced a few mistakes into the scores all of which (hopefully) were found and corrected. Here are the final standings of the top 7 pilots who flew in the fly-offs: pilot score plane Oleg Golovidov 11,723 Taboo XL Tom Kiesling 11,643 own design Russ Bennett 11,447 Taboo XL Phil Barnes 11,350 own design Adam Weston 11,043 Encore/own design Doug Pike 10,869 own design Don Vetter 10,710 own design Thanks to all of the participants for making the event happen. Thanks to the contest director Dick Proseus for organizing the event. Thanks to his wife Linda for providing a great lunch on both days. Thanks to our main sponsor Doug Barry for his tremendous support of the event. Thanks to all our sponsors for donating raffle prizes. Thanks to George Oakey for keeping the scores and doing many other things. Thanks to all club members who helped with the contest organization. We need more pilots next year! Come on, California, Texas, Utah, Ohio, ...! Where are your HLG pilots?! Please, make plans to attend our HLG festival next year! I will post another message to let y'all know when I upload the pictures and full results from the event on my web-site. Thermals to all, Oleg. 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.
