I had a great time. It was my first year at the competition and I learned a lot.

I was a crew chief for MSU's plane, and I didn't get much rest. Our pilot landed a bit short of the runway on one flight, and the plane hit the grass and violently flipped over, crushing the tail to little pieces. We rushed it back to the pits, and I pieced the tail back together and re-covered it while other team members focused on the nosewheel damage. Every time I'd turn on my covering heat gun, the generators near the tents would sputter and start to die, so I had to shrink the Monokote in short bursts. I was really impressed by how well out team worked together under pressure. It was like we were surgeons operating on a patient, we stayed cool and focused during a very stressful time and everyone on our team did all they could to get our plane back together. We had the plane back in the queue in about an hour, and all of our repairs held up great.

We were plagued with more bad luck on our last flight when our box drop mechanism failed to release the box. The judges couldn't decide if the flight could be scored without dropping the box (while the clock was ticking mind you) so our pilot ignored the judges and just took off again, and luckily on the takeoff roll the box came out! The only time our box drop didn't work was when we needed it most! I'm glad our pilot decided to ignore the judges, as they were eating up our time trying to make a decision.

We scored 8th overall, helped a lot by our assembly time of 9 seconds, which was the fastest at competition, and our report score of 90.

I was impressed by "Spirit of Monty" and I knew it was going to be tough competition when I saw it. Very well done guys, she looks and flies great.

And thanks to Starfire for assisting us in any way that he could at the contest. He's a former MSU student who is now with UIUC, but that didn't stop him from being very helpful to us.

For the most part, the attitudes of the competitors impressed me. Sure, it was competition, but the camraderie between teams was great. When a plane went down, it wasn't like people were celebrating over having less competition. It felt bad to see another school's plane crash and all I saw was respect and support for those who lost their planes.

I hope to see you all next year in Wichita!