Let me add my congrats to Igor as well, and add a story that many may have missed. I do know that Igor does not like me to write stuff like this but I'm going to anyway. I did indeed spend 4 days with Igor at their flying site in Bratislava. What a privilege to observe Igor and Alex at work. At the same time I was helped with an incredible amount of trimming and coaching from Igor. I was hoping to move up from my previous best of 37th place at least by 10 places. My Newtron stunter started to show some promise and I had some pretty decent flights. As Igor mentioned, he does practices regularly but with a definite purpose each time and certainly not 2000 flights!
You must also understand that I was invited to Bratislava by Igor in spite of the fact that he really needed to defend his world champs title. I really did not want to bother him or distract him from this purpose......but of course, I did. In Poland, I had my first round in wind and rain.....yes rain, they did not stop in the rain. I wear glasses and it's no fun with drops of water on the old goggles! I did not score well on the low scoring circle. Yes.....we had a low scoring circle and a high scoring circle with big differences in judging between the two, but that's another story. I was up on the high scoring circle for my second flight and it was windy and gusty wind at that. Then the unthinkable happened and my Newtron broke the rear fuselage somewhere in the 2nd outside square. When I say that I was devastated, I would say that it is an understatement......I was destroyed! I had this collection of pieces with a center fuselage piece and two broken wings. In fact when Igor came over I had already chucked a lot of it into the nearest dirt bin. He came over and said "If you want, we can fix it." I said that this would be be totally impossible, but Igor replied in more or less these words "If you say yes, then we will fix it. If you say no then that is o.k. BUT we can fix it!" I was reluctant to agree knowing that Igor and Alex were both working hard to perform to their best and I certainly did not want to stand in their way. I eventually agreed and Igor set the wheels in motion. He sourced some balsa from the local Polish club through event director Marek Dominiak That evening Igor, Alex Shrek, Jan Stano, Svorad Sıkorčin and also help from Tania Uzunova, started on the repair. I was mostly in the way, and I remember Jan Stano giving me a shot of Vodka which Igor told me was actually, cyano activator. These guys actuall had a lot of fun during the process! You can see the pics on Tania's Face Book page at
https://www.facebook.com/taniq.uzunova/posts/762089607204071?comment_id=764713133608385&offset=0&total_comments=30Alex build a whole new nose and Igor and the other guys put many of the pieces together and made new parts where necessary. We finished up at around 01:00 and then I had to fit the electric stuff and motor. I figured out where to fit the esc, wiring and switches but could not get the motor in properly and went to bed. I was up at 05:00 without any useful sleep and then Igor was down with again at 05:30. We got it all together and I was out at the field at around 07:30. Pat McKenzie kindly let me sneak into his place at one of the practice circles and I flew the beast. It flew quite well. Not that great and nowhere near the previous trim, but good enough to get me some points. I was down at the very bottom of the pack so far. My 3rd round was at 09:15 and conditions were good, but I was very sleepy and did 4 loops either way and scored fat zero's for the round loops. I went back to our guest house for a little much needed shut-eye and then flew my last round at 15:45. This went better and with many words from Igor telling me to fly softly and to count my loops, I did a lot better and scored 1010. This pushed my place up from down at the bottom to 50th place. Not close to my target of ending in the 20's but still rather amazing. The take apart model was now all glued together, so there way no way to take it back home. The story did the rounds and Marek asked if I could leave it for their local club as a reminder of this special effort of the stunt family. This I did after all of the workers signed it. You can also see from the photos that I crossed out the name Newtron and called it "Apache" because of all the patches.
So from heartbreak to a heart-warming experience which I will never forget, I would like to publicly thank my good friend Igor and the Slovak team for their incredible job of fixing this 64 year old South African's model. I feel very humbled and will go home with these very special memories. This just adds to what others, like Keith Trostle has already said....Igor is a true world champ in every way!!
Sincerely,
Keith R