I'll tell you what. I think I just experienced the beginning of something really big. I met more fun loving and enthusiastic competitors than I can remember names. But I'll mention a few with thanks to all.
Fellow Novice flyers Austin Wingo and David III, and Brandon S were some young and able competitors. Hats off to you guys and thanks for the joust. Just watching made it a learning experience. Ed flying a Taurus so well was really inspiring, get the model pointed the right way and the vertical performance doesn't really matter much!

George and Mark K, thanks for the fun conversation and helpful hints especially the great calling, Mark.

I CAN"T BELIEVE I JUST SPENT THE WEEKEND CALLING FOR MARK RADCLIFF! Really, I'm new to R/C, don't know much except magazine stuff, and had never been to a Pattern contest. Mark walks up, says "Hi, is this the St. Louis Kaos?" and introduces himself saying he recognized the model from the RCU thread. From then on it was questions from me, subtle and concise coaching from Mark, and he asked me if I wanted to call for him. YES SIR! He shows me some super Masters flying with the Phoenix.
Fun days when my dear, departed buddy Don in SoCal had a contract for all of Great Planes fibreglass stuff came back; me making cowls and pants, fuselages and stuff while doing unemployed pilot duty, came back to me. Early TOC Scale models were few and our little company made a 109 inch Chipmunk. Some early TOC guys bought our models. I kept thinking I knew the name Radcliff. He dug on Phil Kraft's stuff. Yeah...I remember some guys, faces mainly...
Then Mark pulls out the Super Fli! Of course. More magazines, but at least i knew the stuff, and the Scale ships.

Mark's Super Fli and Phoenix 8 flew like the wind, ran great, and are both originals from '78 and '81 respectively so that is a testament to Mark's care of of stuff. To clean up and overhaul old models and engines and then get top performance is really something. Both models were usually one flip starters all weekend.

Very nice Mark; The airshow on contest day was Tim flying a super powerful P-38 Scale model and Mark flying the Super Fli. Mark had changed a couple of maneuvers for the airshow because of the particular behavior of the Super Fli. A really cool element was that this first year Scale turnaround model was essentially an experiment of the time, and ended up a little short on tail area, but long on autorotational ability. After the end of the TOC demo, Mark added a couple of super lomcevaks. Man, the Super Fli loves that tumble stuff! Mark and I were both laughing at the coolness of the old birds manners. Hats off to you Mark, thanks for bringing your models and being such a big part of the weekend.

Rusty has caught the vision here, I think, for a resurgence in R/C Aerobatic participation. Many participants commented about the same thing. He used the best of existing organizations elements to make a fine first showing of what Classic Pattern can be. That would be inclusive contests. Bring what you got from late eighties down, any equipment. And, lets fly a lot. I, as a Novice in class and by definition, found an easy to accept contest environment and can see it's the right thing for bringing a mass of participants into an Aerobatic Contest scenario with FUN first and COMPETITION second (well, 1 1/2?)!

Congrats Rusty and David for a great weekend of fun and huge success. Thanks to the Fox Vally Club for hosting the event with their beautiful field. WOW!

Chris...