Here are the contest reports and notes from the 2009 season. You will find all the rounds scores and standings in another pages that you can find listed in the menu on the left.
Wenatchee
On Memorial Day weekend, D8 folks traveled to Wenatchee, Washington for the contest of the year and the "First Annual" pattern contest at their site. I have to tell you... this is one fine flying site! A private company runs the local refuse disposal and purchased the property of the old flying site... then they built the flying club a new site with club house, Rv hookups, etc... They have both, a grass and paved runway. We ended up with only ten pilots, as a lot of folks had previous plans for the holiday weekend. We had a great time, and it was good to get our foot in the door, so to speak, with another host site for expanding our D8 contest schedule. We flew four rounds on Saturday, and woke up to howling winds on Sunday. We sat around for a while and decided to just use the four rounds for the contest and head for home. For most of us, this was our first flights for 2009, and we were pretty ratty, at best. It was great practice, and I can't say enough good about our gracious hosts. We had a great time and this contest is already on the list for next season. A couple of the local folks that were originally going to fly in the contest had recently lost their planes and couldn't fly, but two did enter and had a great time. It appears that there is a lot of interest in pattern with this club, and I hope it continues! We did have the "death" of one pattern ship on Saturday.... Ray McClellan's plane decided to quit listening to the transmitter on landing approach and went in hard enough to explode into submission. You never know, and we've all been there!
Mollala, pics
On the weekend of June 6-7, we found ourselves in Molalla, Oregon for our Sixth?" year. The weekend was a bit strange... The grayest skies you have ever seen! I'm talking about multiple stages of gray! I'm told this weather came from California, and I'm going to have to talk to someone down there to get this type of thing stopped! We don't want it, so stop sending it our way! Ok? Oh, and you can keep the wind too! We managed our way through four rounds, then called it quits. We had a few folks that had to leave early for home, and the weather was getting to be a hit and miss episode. This had to be the worst sky for seeing an airplane that I've ever flown in. Even the white on your plane turned gray! In loops, at the top 45 degrees, going up, you couldn't even tell your plane had wings... you just had to hope you were lined up. If the plane turned away from you, you couldn't tell until it started moving off line... OOPS too late! lol I tried three or four different color lenses and none of them helped. There were quite a few times when planes had to just leave the maneuver on its own and then get straightened out after the pilot figured out what it was doing.
We had thirteen pilots, including a first time contest entrant... Brad Burden from the Molalla gang has made the plunge! I hate to tell you Brad, but flying pattern is like entering a black hole. There's no way out! You are going to just have to keep going! That's the way it is. Glad to have you aboard!
I gotta tell ya, even if the flying weather gets the best of this group, we just regroup and take it inside! We always have our evenings well planned... Mexican food on Friday night, and dinner in a country club on Saturday night. The flying gets left at the field and it becomes a "family outing". I'd like to thank Gail Walker and Cheryl Carder for all their efforts in feeding lunch to the hungry masses on both days... Thank you! And lets not forget Meri Anderson for her relentless scoring abilities! She has it down to a science! Thanks Meri! We can use all the help we can get....
TriCities, pics
Washington for the Annual Fun In The Sun contest, CD’d by Dennis Cone. We had a good turn out of 16 entrants. The weekend was nice and sunny, a little on the breezy side and warm!... 100 on Friday, 103 on Saturday and 101 on Sunday. My pop up has paid for itself many times over! We had three or more pilots in each
Over the Independence Day weekend the flyers in D8 converged on Richland, class except in advanced which had two pilots, and it made for a fun weekend.
The high temps were pretty hard on the batteries for the electric guys. We swelled batteries with each flight, but I don’t really think we had any damage to speak of. I had a failure on the next to last maneuver of one of my flights. I’m sure it was the result of a rectal/cranial inversion. I didn’t check the voltage of the battery before the flight, which I always do. I was more than sure that it had been charged, I was in a hurry, and in hind sight I believe I had flown it on a short trim flight of a couple minutes and forgot to recharge it. When I got back on the ground after the power down, it looked like a Stay Puff marshmallow as I pulled it out! After I cooled it, put it on a balance charge and let it cook. It basically took all day and some of the next morning to get it back in shape. I flew it on the last round and it appears to have all the power it ever had, but I’m sure I took some of the life out of it. So once again, I’ve promised myself that I won’t fly unless I check the battery voltage. My system of using the green and red bands for charged vs to be charged isn’t working well enough.
The “Kid”, Alexander Safarik is doing a great job moving up the ladder. It’s fun watching him improve with every contest. In talking to him, it’s been decided that he will be moving up to Advanced some time soon, before the end of the season. It will be interesting to watch this unfold. If he keeps progressing at the rate he is currently, he’ll be in Masters and/or FAI pretty quickly
We only had a couple problems with airplanes over the weekend. Craig Christensen’s plane had a landing gear problem that he didn’t have time to get completely fixed before the contest. The landing gear block needs to be taken out and replaced. He fought that and put in a valiant effort to get through the contest with a wounded bird. Art Kelly came all the way up from Grants Pass, Oregon, only to fight an engine that didn’t want to run. We tried everything from glow plugs to changing fuel to no avail. The engine would not keep an even adjustment
and would just die at any moment without notice. We really didn’t have the time to tear it all down to see what the problem was. He emailed me that he has the problem solved now. He took that engine out and is replacing it with a brand new OS 140 RX. That should do the Trick! Hopefully, Art will have it all going and get some practice for the next contest in Redmond, Oregon. Dennis Cone had his gas powered Symphony running well, but was having problems with the header breaking. This plane has a tremendous amount of power, even in the hot, thin air. I’m sure he’ll get the header breakage problem cured. Now if he could just get his job to schedule around the contest schedule, he’d really have it made!
Lyle Laughery got to hang out with us on Saturday and Sunday. He wasn’t able to fly as he is in the process of painting his new plane. It was great to have Lyle around. Maybe he can get his plane finished and join the fun.
The heat during the days took a toll on everyone, so for both evenings, we escaped to a couple nice, cool restaurants for nourishment and refreshments! I’d like to thank Dennis and his wife, Linda for taking care of us over the weekend. Lunches were at the field both days, and Linda did all the scoring chores! Gordon and Meri Anderson made the trophies once again! Thanks for all your efforts! Not to mention thanking everyone in D8 that showed up for the contest! It was great to have a full field of contestants once again.
Redmond, pics
Over the weekend of August 8 & 9, the pilots of D8 landed on the the Field of Dreams in Redmond, Oregon. This club is a great host and knows how to provide a good time for all invaders! Thanks for the fine weekend, Redmond RC! Most of us got there on Friday, mid day, to stand around in high winds from the tail end of a storm passing through. Not much of a problem really, we are pretty good at flapping our lips and catching up on the gossip. The weekend really shaped up to be a fine weekend for flying. The sun was shining, winds were fairly light and the temps stayed around 80 for the most part. We had a few no shows that had last minute problems, preventing them from coming, but we still ended up with 16 entries. It was decided we would fly off one line and just keep it all flowing along. You can’t really start flying rounds before 10:30 because you face due East, and the sun was really brutal. We flew three rounds on Saturday and decided to end it after round five on Sunday as pretty much all the finish positions had been decided.
We had a couple casualties during the contest… Art Kelly had come from Grants Pass, with a new engine that wasn’t really broken in and was pretty temperamental. He had a flame out at mid field and the wind was blowing pretty strong… The Impact didn’t make it onto the runway, and clipped some brush on landing. Tore up the leading edge of the tip of the left wing and oil canned a spot in the fuse. The fuse will be a pretty simple fix, but he needs to find a wing. Bill Carder started feeling ill on Saturday evening and decided to head home Sunday morning instead of flying.
The big battle of the weekend was no doubt in Advanced… at one point the lead was split by 3 points and was going to come down to the last flight. It was fun to watch! We had four pilots in Sportsman and they are improving with each contest.
They’ll be battling in Intermediate in no time! It was great to so such a great turnout for this contest. Dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings were a lot of fun… Pizza Friday, and Italian at our usual spot on Saturday. We had 20 entries for the Italian Feast! We even got a secret Birthday surprise for Brad Burden whom turned 50 that fine day! The waitress brought him a big chocolate ice cream thingy with a candle on it, and we sang him the song of aging as he blew it out. We had a lot of fun at his expense!
EAC, pics
Over Labor Day weekend, the folks from D8, along with a few from Canada, California, and Nevada gathered for the Annual Emerald Air Corps. pattern contest in Creswell, Oregon. During the week prior to the contest, the weather guessers were changing the forecast every day. Apparently the hurricanes off the coast of Mexico were moving around so much, the air currents were hard to project.
Friday before the contest was very nice. It was a little breezy, but warm and sunny and planes were lined up in rows for pilots to take turns getting in practice flights. This went along all day, and the evening looked hopeful. Well, 2 o’clock Saturday morning, I’m awakened by the sound of water pouring outside my bedroom window… ah yes, the sounds of life in the great NW! To be fair, we’ve really been fortunate for the last nine years. In all those years, we’ve only had rain once during this contest, and that was just a shower or two that put a slight delay to the flying. This year, we all got to the field Saturday morning to really low clouds, fog, and a steady rain that didn’t seem to want to stop. We sat around till around noon when the rain just stopped. The Judges jumped in the chairs, and both flight lines were in business. With the overcast, we were able to fly a little longer than normal, but around four o’clock, the sun started shining in our eyes and we opted to stop flying for the day and take our chances on Sunday.
Sunday morning looked pretty good, we had only gotten a little rain during the night and the skies looked pretty decent. We started flying and stayed right on it.
We had a few delays with a couple sprinkles, but everyone just got right back at it when the delays were over. We ended up getting five rounds completed and decided to end the contest. The wind was getting pretty brutal by then, as it was building more and more all morning. Besides, we still had to do the awards ceremony and the prize raffle, which takes quite a bit of time. We had quite a few modeling type raffle prizes donated this year. Fuel, a couple electric planes, axles, a large plane stand, you name it. Probably the most notable prize was an airplane quilt made and donated to the raffle by Linda Cone from Richland, Washington. Very nice indeed!
Thank you Linda, you are too kind! Make mine a queen size next year!
The Creswell contest is also the D8 District Championship contest. Points for this contest are doubled. With that being said, only one position in the points lead changed, jumping a pilot one place, and allowed Brad Burden to capture the Sportsman District Championship. This is also Brad’s first season in pattern. He is flying better with every contest and is catching on quickly. I surmise that he will be flying Intermediate next season?!
