Believe it or not, Tom, Channel 2 wasn't there and we didn't get much ESPN coverage either.
Quite literally there are almost enough people in the clubs that put on the event now to cover the necessary judging and running and tabulating and thats it, some doing double duty as flying too in other events. The CD's flew two events each. Past event winners were judging Classic. The event doesn't get the attendance it once did, most people are in their 70's and 80's. There is a percentage in their 40's and 50's but it's not a huge number so doesn't bring the crowd of the 90's or 2000's. The guys that used to come and take pics weren't there, even SoCal and Phoenix attendance was lacking.
I took two pictures on my phone, one of a guy in his late 30's model from SoCal that brought a Sky Scraper (Steve, sorry I've forgotten your last name) that was done really well and he couldn't enter because he couldn't get days off from work but drove over for the weekend. We found him a banquet ticket and hopefully he'll be able to replace one of the old timers that don't fly anymore in the future. The other picture was Mark Gerber's Hurricane.
The first VSC was in 1989, I was 30. The rules were supposed to be a rolling 30 years and they were changed sometime after that first event to the end of 1969. That meant that a lot of guys were going to get old and die that had favorite models in that era and someone else was going to have to come up with a new event eventually that included the younger set's favorite models. I was born in 1958, yeah I love Billy's Ares but all the big kids going off to Viet Nam were the one's that had that kit and I graduated in 1977 from high school. So now Whitely's Derringer is okay in Super 70's but that's 38 years old and remember I was 33 years old when I was Rookie of the Year at the 1992 Nats in Mass. In other words, the rolling 30 was the best idea for nurturing a group of young Stunt modelers to continue building and flying models of the same age historically. Unintended consequence? Maybe, but done with definite reason, Mike Keville's being that he hated models like Gene Schaffer's Stunt Machine and Bob Hunt's Genesis because of their stick shapes. I thought they were cool.
Bill Lee was doing the pull test in Circle 3 and I asked him what he thought of C/L 's chances and he said we are the last generation of C/L flyers. I hope not but I could see his point.
Hope to see you out here next year, Tom.
Chris...
Topic: VSC 2017 photos... (Read 9758 times)