2006 East Coast Combat Championships
August 5-6, 2006
Thanks all you combat fans that showed up and flew. Looked like everyone was having a reasonably good time. The weather cooperated both days with not too much heat, no rain, and not too much wind. Lots of good flying contributed too. I think we set a record with only one really spectacular midair in 24 matches. There were a few linetangle/crashes, but very little carnage. One interesting trend. With fewer midairs, quite a few flyers were taking a bit of time to add some decoration to their planes. Jeff Vader put together some really pretty stuff, along with Kent Weaver flying a "Red Baron" plane and a camouflage job, and Scott Schmidt added quite a bit of color to his also. Another good-to-see trend was more newer combat flyers. I counted 7 out of the 12 flyers as Sportsman- beginners(one pilot had never flown combat before), retreads with very limited recent experience, and also some new flyers who had trained up hard but still had little match experience. Everybody got in all 4 of their flights.
Overall Round Up
Air Time Cuts Mid Airs Line Tangles Score
1 Phil Cartier 1036 11 0 1 2736
2 s Shaylene Vader 1149 5 0 0 2446
3 Jeff Vader 1024 5 1 0 2424
4 Roy Glenn 1008 5 0 0 2308
5 s Kent Weaver 894 7 0 1 2094
6 Gil Reedy 1084 2 0 0 2084
7 Louis Lopez 913 3 0 0 2013
8 s Fred Quedenfeld 824 2 0 0 1824
9 s Frank Wike 707 0 1 1 1307
10 s Scott Schmidt 798 1 1 1 1298
11 s Jason Allen 417 2 1 1 1017
12 s Dan Reedy 202 1 2 1 502
My apologies for poor arithmetic. Going over the scores and match cards we made a couple mistakes in addition. The biggest one was missing a couple bonus points for Shaylene. The extra 400 points bumped her score up to second place, a few points ahead of her dad.
Old Lady Luck really showed up this time around. Roy and Louis usually put up flights like clockwork, but this time around they were bedevilled by minor problems- broken bladders, missed settings, putting up the wrong plane, and other problems. Phil, Shaylene, and Jeff generally got easier matches.
In other action-
Roy and Phil had a great match. Phil had a stunt engine run but still managed to keep even with Roy on cuts. In the last few laps the motor came on and he got a third cut just before time ran out.
Kent and Phil had another tough match in the final round, flying to a 2-2 tie late in the match and Kent hit the ground in a line tangle.
Jason Allen, flying combat for the first time, got some good scores in his first three matches. He had engine run problems and hit the ground once. Flying Dan Reedy in the last match of the day, they had a classic combat midair clobber. After a few figure eights they both levelled out, pulled a wingover, and had a spectacular midair directly overhead.
Kent Weaver has really come on strong. One contest last year, a couple this year, and some serious practice put him at the top of the Sportsman class with 7 cuts.
The raffle was lucrative this year. Fred Quedenfeld took the LA 25CL engine. Louis Lopez got a carbon copy of the winning Gotcha F2D07. Kent Weaver walked away with a box of four foam wing cores. Everybody got pizza for lunch. And many thanks to the dedicated judging staff- Don Holbrook, Gil Reedy, Dan Reedy, Allen Buck.
Half A had the usual crew of culprits- 6 entries. Roy Glenn got first, Pat Ferraro second, and Louis Lopez third. The double elim contest went of fairly quickly, considering everybody had to fly, pit, fix, and judge. Looked like only 4 kills though. These guys need to get hungrier.