Marilou and I motored into Eugene Friday evening. I went to the field, festooned my dog with VGs, and put in a couple of flights in the waning light of day. I then arose Saturday at approximately my normal bedtime and put in a couple more before being kicked off the paved circles by racing and Classic stunt. I watched Pat Johnston put up a humdinger of a flight in Profile, only to lose his pattern and landing points to an overrun. Lacking good grass gear and being tuckered from having arisen at approximately my normal bedtime, I spent the rest of the much-nicer-than-forecast day socializing and finding out who flew what in the Saturday stunt events. Old Time was on Friday, so I don't know who flew what in Old Time. If anybody knows, please email me soon, so I can get it into Stunt News. The reason for moving Old Time to Friday, according to a tabulator, was that it is so labor intensive, all scores having to be multiplied by weighting factors. That's how pure the Northwest Regionals is, folks. We use no tabulating technology for Old Time that wasn't around in 1953.
I went to the hotel to take a nap, intending to return to the field in the evening to fly more stunt, but the wx had caught up with the forecast, so we adjourned to the Outback and ate too much Australian food. I got up in the rosy fingered dawn to put in a couple of flights before appearance judging. The lineup for appearance judging was spectacular as usual. Even without Larry Fernandez and PT Granderson, there was a plethora of pretty planes. You Eastern stunt people who don't use appearance points because you think craftsmanship should be left to the Chinese should come out here to see how cool stunt planes can look.
Weather wasn't too awful when stunt began, but got kinda blustery as the first round progressed. The breeze was blowing through some trees and not whispering Louise. My flight had some bumpy air, but nothing really perverted, and my airplane got through it just fine, no doubt because of the vortex generators. I thought I had flown some darn good stunt until PW and my wife both informed me independently of the atrociousness of my overhead eights. Nevertheless, I led the Junior Varsity in the first round. The second round featured rain and more turbulence. Of those brave enough to fly, only Alan Resinger and Kestas Dvarvydis improved their scores. When Bruce Perry, who was nipping at my heels for the JV championship, passed, I allowed as how that if this round wasn't good enough for Bruce, it wasn't good enough for me. As at last year's Golden State Championships, the guy with the most vortex generators on his airplane won.
Don McClave was stunt ED and concentrated his effort on judge recruitment. He did produce some good judge pairings. Expert was judged by two gentlemen both of whom have Nats judge shirts identifying them as Ted Fancher. Advanced was judged by people named Dave, both of whom are or were married to people named Alice. Beginner and Intermediate were judged by people both of whom are women. Old Time was judged by people both of whom fly clockwise. Profile judges were both world stunt champions.
At the prize ceremony each trophy winner picks something from the table of merchandise loot. Paul Walker had departed to have dinner with his mom, so I got his trophy and at the urging of the crowd selected a nice fuel tank from the table.
Many NW Regionals contestants have been attending for over 30 years, and it's become a big family reunion. A bunch of us went to a fine dinner at the Hop Something after the contest. Marilou and I got there early so we wouldn't get home at midnight. We had a great time with the gang and got home at midnight.
See Stunt News and Flyinglines.org for the contest lowdown.
Topic: Northwest Regionals (Read 18298 times)
