Indoor pattern contest November 2016 NVRC
NVRC Indoor Pattern
NVRC hosted an indoor pattern contest on 19 November 2016. Several members of the Northern Virginia RC club built foam based indoor pattern planes to compete in the event. The strategy of this gathering was to (1) garner interest in F3P, (2) start to build the foundation for indoor pattern within the U.S. and (3) have fun. I think we met all three of the above.
The original idea was spawned from the fact that three of the four F3P indoor pattern world championship team members live within a 30-minute radius of each other. Wow, what an opportunity. The date was selected based on the original availability of all three to attend the event. In any event, we had an excellent evening. Here are a few take-aways from the event.
1. The UMX Yak 54 3D BNF Basic with AS3X was a huge hit. Four of the Intermediate pilots used this plane. It’s a really nice entry level indoor pattern plane and It can be flown in much smaller areas with sufficient time to draw maneuvers well. The AS3X gives the plane a very solid feel like that of larger F3P type planes, with respect to the wings level and control during maneuvers.
2. Combining the venue with other types of flying such as open sport flying, Inductrix FPV racing and such helps to draw more folks into indoor pattern. The winner of Intermediate, Mason Wallace, was tearing up the sky in the “open fly” area with his UMX Yak 54 and literally entered at the last minute. He ended up winning the event.
3. Partnership with a local club provides a venue for students and other types of participants to join. It was neat seeing four high school students about the same age participate in the indoor fly-in portion. Two went to the same high school and met for the first time at this event.
So, on the results. We had 5 entered in Intermediate and two in F3P.
1[SUP]st[/SUP] place Maison Wallace
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] place Richard Mintz
3[SUP]rd[/SUP] place Robert Moore
F3P
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Place Joseph Szczur
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Place Don Szczur
I would like to thank Don Manson and Gerald Hood for judging at the event and my wife Beth for handling registration, hot chocolate and the snacks.