Thursday morning was again beautiful. We got to the field and Scott and I
started to work on the Extra while the contest started. I wanted to fine
tune the thrust, so I added a bit more up and right to the motor. Scott was
installing some more motor baffling and Mark Hale was installing his tail
wheel springs so I could actually taxi the airplane around. By flight # 13,
we were rolling the Extra out to the flight line and fueled it up, ready to
fly. The first Known went well, with only a couple of minor errors in the
flight. As it turned out, they must have been very minor because I won the
round. That was a start I was happy about. I knew that even with limited
practice, if I could get the plane trimmed, I would be fine. After all, I've
flown the same design for 4 years now. The Unknown also went well, with only
1 bobble, of which I thought would kill me, cause it was awful looking but
technically not a major downgrade. As it turned out, it was a downgrade, but
only dropped me to 2nd place in the round. Still a great start, but the
final flight was freestyle. For those who know my freestyle past, it's not
usually my strongest scoring part of competition. Well, I thought that I
finally had a good enough freestyle to keep me in the running for first. We
went through the routine and settled in to a 6th place finish. I was happy
as there were some really impressive freestyles this year. So overall the
first day results were:

1st: Quique Someinzini
2nd: Me
3rd: Christophe Paysant LeRoux
4th: Mark Leseberg
5th: Mike McConville