The 2017 NATs is in the books. I want to thank all the workers and the flyers for making this a very good event. The AMA field maintenance crew was very helpful and answered every need we called them on. I received MANY compliments from the flyers who enjoyed the event. We had some problems with weather but everyone was understanding & supportive and we made the best of it. It was my great honor to “take the bows” for a fabulous team of workers. Here’s a few comments along the way:
Monday night Pilots meeting lasted about 45 minutes and Appearance Judging was complete when we were. One change I wanted to implement this year was to award the Concours Trophy before we left the building. While we were having the pilot’s meeting Will Hinton and his crew placed all the airplanes and scored them. The Concours voting took a little longer than I had hoped but still, most of the people stayed and saw Derek Barry earn the award for his truly beautiful Cutlass. Another side note, Bruce Jennings scored 17 points for his truly fabulous Cobra, that may be the highest(?) ever achieved by a Monocoted entry. The suggestion was made, to award the Concours on Wednesday Morning at the field before the first flight goes up. I leave that on the table for next year’s Event Director.
When Jeff Traxler arrived to check out the Pull test scales he determined that between the two of them exactly ONE LED would light. He cleaned the corrosion out of the battery boxes and Terry Bentley drove up & down McGalliard road finding the 40 (!!!) L-44 cells needed. Flyers are now advised to wear their sunglasses & sunscreen when pull testing, to preempt an LED burn!
Doug & Kathleen Patterson did an excellent job running Classic, Old Time, and the new Nostalgia 30 event on the L-Pad. They used all four circles to get it done faster and that worked well too. However, Doug and I recommend trying to move the events back to the grass circles next year with the L-pad as a contingency in case of wet grounds. We need to consider getting a perpetual trophy for Nos-30 similar to what Classic & OTS have. I’m thinking a plaque with lots of name plates – something easier to handle & transport than the other perpetuals.
We had 3 significant weather delays. On Thursday, we got a big thunderstorm that was predicted for 2pm – it arrived just before noon but we cleared the circles just in time. The storm looked pretty nasty; instead of having people hanging around I told them to get some lunch and come back at 3pm, figuring that we would know better what was happening. The storm abated a little before 2 but it was pretty breezy. A couple volunteers manned squeegees to clear up one big puddle in the pit for circles 1-2. The breeze and some sunshine dried up the circles by our 3pm restart. The Advanced circles and 1 Open circle had completed, the 2nd rounds of 3 other open circles had not begun. MANY pilots decided to pass between 2pm-3pm, however as Dave Trible noted in his thread, by the time we started flying it was quite manageable and by the time we finished it was near ideal conditions. I think a lot of pilots are probably second guessing their decision to pass Round 2.
On Friday, we woke up to another storm that was not part of the previous evening’s forecast. It was a big one that blew down several tents, included the big canopy they had over by the Pylon area. Based on the weather radar I called for a 3-hour delay of the start until 11AM. Rain stopped a little before 10 and we had practice flights going up around 10:15. By 11am the circles were in pretty good shape and we had good conditions for the rest of that day. A note for the future events: PAMPA will be bringing a new website online soon. It will be capable of live updates, future Event Directors will also be able to get the word out quickly when things like weather delays happen. It would have been great to have that utility as we made the call after many had left their hotels only to turn around and go back to wait it out. It took a while to spread the word via phone calls & text but it worked out pretty well.
Forecast for Saturday was awful, with 80% chance of rain all morning until 2PM. Late Friday, the forecast improved slightly to look like we might have a window from 8-10 or so, but we woke up (6am) to heavy rain and lots of wind - which stopped before 7am. We decided to forego the warm-up flights and had our first official flights up by 7:45. Circles were still wet and a little slippery for most of rounds 1-2 but got better with time. We finished well within our window.
The threat of rain had abated but the wind was coming up. For the Walker Cup, we (the Champions & I) settled on a 1-round contest. Joining our Open Champion, David Fitzgerald, were our Junior Champion, Steve Daly and Senior Champion, Samantha Hines who acquitted themselves with great poise. David had Steven join him in the circle with him during his Walker flight and said the two of them carried on a lively conversation.
With that we concluded our events and it is time to start thinking about the future. I will make a separate post on what I know about 2018 NATs planning so far.
THANKS to Chris Rud for the live score update page. That will be a capability on the upcoming new PAMPA website. Future Event Directors will be faced with the challenge of somehow sequestering it from their Judges view.
I also enjoyed reading Dave Trible’s updates posted on SH. Dave has been doing this at the NATs & Team Trials for a few years and it always makes for a great read.
Finally, I want to single out John Paris for his heroic work running the NATs program and working through the few minor hiccups we had during the week. Another big thank you to all of our workers and pilots who came together to make this another special event.
Topic: Event Director’s Observations – 2017 NATs (Read 1435 times)