We had the contest. Fred Cronenwett was the CD and was taking photos, but he must be busy if he hasn't reported yet. It was a weird weekend. Friday night, it snowed, sleeted and freezing rained. I drive right by Buder every day, and it was covered in snow and ice again. It accumulated pretty good on the highway and was one of the most treacherous drives home I have ever had!
Then Saturday dawned and it slowly warmed all day until it got to 40 degrees or so, and cleared the circles. Another cold front moved through after dark, and Sunday was bitter cold with temps around 20 degrees and falling through the day and windy. I opted to not fly and judged the two entries we had in Stunt with Bob Arata, and we had four entries I think in the new Fox .35 Stunt Speed class that we are experimenting with. The cold temps had John Moll and Tim Pansic struggling to get decent needle settings on models that they didn't have much time on. Jason Pearson came into town with his new Fox speed model and put up some impressive runs in the mid to upper 80 MPH range. As soon as the official flights for speed were finished, we handed out awards and headed for warmer venues! Man it was really biting cold with the wind blowing. As I get older, I just can't tolerate cold any more.
Jason brought the venerable Pine Twister to fly stunt with. For those who don't know, it's a stock SIG Twister ( the nose is extended a bit to help balance) made entirely out of pine, instead of balsa. It weighs in the high 50 to low 60 ounce range, but you would never know it to see it fly. Jason does a good job with it. I imagine the cold, more dense air helped with the weight. He and his dad built it years ago, just to see what it would do! Maybe he'll see this and fill in details.
That's pretty much it. It's been a while since we had some good luck with the weather, so I was hoping to get at least into the upper 30s or lower 40s for temps and sunshine with no wind! Looks like the old ground hog was correct with this years prediction!
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee