elmshoot

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If you thought you had the “Right Stuff” Muncie, July 13th 2019 was the place to be! We had Great weather, It was hot but the racing was hotter. We had 11 entered in the Silver class and 5 in the Bronze class I had asked before the event not to run the Gold class, past experience showed it really became a untenable undertaking for one guy to race in both Silver and Gold and in fact detracted from the quality of the overall racing. So we had the best pilots out to fly, focused on 4 plane Silver races and 3 plane Bronze races. It seemed like weather had been a factor for everyone flying local races and here in Indiana this was the first Club 40 event of the year so there was some rust for the Hoosiers.
Race setup went well, we had the use of the NMPRA timing and scoring system all set up by Tom Melshimer. No matter what was going on Tom ALWAYS had a smile on his face. Our race starter was Dan Kane a real class act who has been in Pylon racing since the 80’s when he was just a kid! To see him fly three pole racers at 200 MPH is pure poetry in motion. Back to the action…. the remote stooges that had been so reliable for the last few years proved to be problematic so we went to full power takeoffs using the caller and the NMPRA count down clock. I hope to have the stooges working reliably shortly.
With a 4 plane heat it gets really crazy for the first few laps and I’m happy to say that the midairs were held to a minimum. My crash box of spare parts was depleted after a few airplanes sheded parts of their tails in close encounters. Jordon Peace, Chad Williams, and your humble race reporter were all victims of minor incidents and were ready in the next rounds with parts from the box. Being able to replace the tail on my Colts trimmed racer (thanks Trey) with another matching tail was a lucky break for me.
We started racing at around Noon and ran continuously round after round with two comfort breaks for the course workers.
Dan Kane kept the race tempo high cranking out heat after heat in an expeditious pace. My goal had been to run 6 rounds of racing but we quickly decided to run a 7th round! A record of some sort I’m sure.
For most it was a blur of activity, I really had no idea who had been racing well so I was just as surprised as anyone when the final points were tallied up. We didn’t have any ties in the top three spots so no fly offs were required, and no one was perfect by winning all seven rounds. When the awards were handed out Gary Fisher became the Silver champion and David Poland continued his rein in the Bronze class.
Brad Clayton was the Silver fast time at 1:28.82 a full second over the next fastest. Our youngest competitor was the Bronze fast time Clay Williams 1:45.0
Gary had been a late addition to the entries and we are all glad he and “Old Bob” Petrinec made the drive up from Texas to race with us.
If you came and raced with us thank you for spending the time and effort to be here. If you didn’t come race, you missed an epic day of Club 40 racing.

Sparky


Pre race pictures at the 2019 NAT's


Final results after 7 Rounds