My Masters
 

Here's my Masters story....

We, Scott Anderson and myself, arrived in Orlando about 7 hours before
Hurricane Jeanne on Saturday at 2pm. We were on the 2nd from last flight in
before they closed the airport. We, now including my dad and friend Dave
Stodart, were supposed to leave to go to South Carolina on Sunday, but with
Jeanne, that was delayed until Monday morning. Thankfully I shipped my plane
right to Hartness International so it would be waiting for us when we
arrived...or at least that was the plan. Talking with Mark Hale at HI, he
said that the motors arrived fine, but no plane. So a couple of calls to Tim
Garcia at Hacker Brushless (where I shipped my plane from) and the plane was
tracked down for a Tuesday delivery. Not such a big deal as we arrived about
8:30pm and we were in the middle of Jeanne again. So we went to bed wishing
for a nice Tuesday so we could get some practice in.

Tuesday is a beautiful, sunny, DRY day. I'm all excited cause I can go get
my plane and finally get in some more practice. A call from Mark again lets
me know that there is still no plane. More calls to Tim and he said that it
should be delivered by noon. Well, we've never been on the tour of HI, so we
set it up with Mark to take a tour. What a facility. I can't believe in all
the years that I've been going there I've never taken the tour. The machines
they build and the tools they have I can understand how the airplanes and
parts that are on Pat's planes are made. Incredible! By this time it's
2:15pm and still no plane. More calls and we find out it should be there
before 3pm. So we set off for some things we need for the contest and get
back to HI and the airplane has finally made it. Crate looks like it's had a
rough trip, but at least there are no fork-lift holes in the side.

We load the crate and head out to Triple Tree, contest site, to unpack the
plane and get in a couple of flights. As I'm pulling out the plane, I'm
noticing signs of a rough ride from AZ to SC. half of the formers were
knocked loose, my batteries were broke from the tray they were on, and there
is a crack in my rear deck. But all in all, it is easy to fix, just time
consuming. But an hour later and everything is put together and ready to
fly. We go out to the runway and fuel and wait to fly. I get up there and
start flying, still trimming the plane (only had 6 flights before I left)
and things are going OK. I was having a bit of teething problems with the
ZDZ 160 motor, but other than that, all was good. When I landed I readjusted
the needles and fueled and waited to go fly again. By this time, the sun was
rapidly falling and darkness was upon us. Jason Noll and Andrew Jesky were
flying and I was going to join them, but at that time, Jason was finished
with his flight, so I joined Andrew. This flight wasn't much better than the
first one as the motor wasn't set again. This ZDZ was almost a prototype and
I had to make some changes to it from it's original set-up. I wasn't worried
as I had another new ZDZ 160 new in the box back at the hanger. I ended up
flying until it was too dark to see (for me, others said they couldn't see
it when I took-off) then went back to the hanger to do some finishing work.
After a call to Mike Dooley at RC Showcase, through Ray Labonte and Andy
Kane to get to him (new cell phones without your old phone numbers is a real
bummer) Mike suggested I just put in the new motor and he'll worry about the
old one when he gets it back to the shop. So Scott, Dave and I get to work
on the plane. I start disassembling the front end for the motor swap,
Scott's getting the pilot ready for install and Dave was supervising...lol.
Finding out that there are some things that I forgot at home, I had to
borrow a bunch of parts from Ivan Kristensen, and that was most everything
but the kitchen sink. He helped me set-up my new TME Simple Smoke pump that
I still hadn't installed, and even had some other parts I needed, at least
that night. By midnight the new motor was in and we fired it up and test ran
it. What a dream. A couple of tweaks on the needles and she was purring. I
wanted to fly I was so excited, but knew I'd have to wait until morning. I
installed the TME smoke system and put the cowling back on. By 1:30am, we
made it back to the hotel and looking forward to the next day.

Photo courtesy of Carol McKinney

RE: My Masters
 

We set-off at 7:30am to go practice. We found some remote field (RC Club)
about 45 minutes away and were the only ones there for an hour. Brian Hanna,
his father and Dan Baker showed up, but they're locals there so it turned
out to not to be a big surprise they were there. We got some flights in
finally, most everything working flawlessly. I managed to strip a few servo
gears over the course of the day, which I wasn't worried about. What did
worry me was that by 4pm, I had 3 dead Futaba receivers. 2 were in the
plane, and 1 was just setting up my aileron servos with a MSA-10 (Futaba
servo matcher). (they are on the way back to service to see what I did to
kill them) That cut our practice time down, but thankfully the only thing we
didn't get to check was the smoke, everything else worked fine, including my
freestyle. So we packed up and headed out to the site and socialized while
we waited for the Pilots Meeting. At 7pm we had our pilots meeting, drew
flight order and received our first Unknowns for the contest. Since we were
all wiped out, I decided that any airplane work would be done in the morning
(I drew flight # 19) before my flight. Off to write out the Unknowns and get
some sleep.

RE: My Masters
 

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

RE: My Masters
 

Friday morning started late as there was about 3+ hours of fog cover. When
it was finally cleared enough to fly, sorta, we started with freestyle first
since you could adjust your flight for low cloud cover. They used the same
flight order as it would have been if we had flown freestyle last instead of
first, so that put me up in the 21st spot. I could finally watch most
everyone's freestyle. When it was finally our turn for the freestyle, I
pulled off a good one. To my amazement, I placed 4th with it. Well, with the
"hard stuff" out of the way, we went on to fly the Known and Unknown,
placing 3rd and 4th respectively. So the semi-finals results were announced
at the barbeque and the top 7 were onto the finals:

1st: Q. Somenzini
2nd: C.P. LeRoux
3rd: Me
4th: M. Leseburg
5th: Sebastiano Silvestri
6th: Chip Hyde
7th: Peter Goldsmith
---------------------------------
8th: M. McConville
9th: Bill Hemple
10th: John Glezellis

(you can see all the scoring details at www.joenall.com )

Photo Courtesy of Frank Noll

RE: My Masters
 

Saturday started with the same fog as Friday did. This gave us some more
time to study our 2 Unknowns and even catch a mistake in my Known #2 call
sheet I had written a week before the contest. Thank you fog. When flying
did finally start, everyone had their A game with them. I was very happy to
be flying after Quique and before Christophe as I felt this was going to be
the top 3 (going by the flying I had seen the previous 2 days). One thing
that was different here from other contests was they were not showing ANY
scores, rounds or individual, so no one knew how they scored until it was
all over. All of my rounds went great, with my only concern being my last
freestyle. I was doing a wing-tip spin on the right end of the runway when I
exited close to the deadline (zero line). From where I was I couldn't tell
if I had pasted it or not (didn't think so) and I didn't know if the judges
thought I had passed it or not. It was killing me to think that I may have
zeroed my final freestyle round of the contest...

After some pictures and joking around, it was time for the results..........

7th: Peter Goldsmith......
6th: Sebastiano Silvestri............
5th: Mark Leseberg...........................
4th: Chip Hyde........................................

Well, at least I knew I was in the top 3, and will the lack of practice and
small issues I had, I was happy. Then they called

3rd: Christophe Paysant LeRoux....................

By this time, I had already won in my mind. I knew I was 2nd cause it was
announced that 2nd and 3rd were only .12 points apart. Quique was flying
outstanding the whole contest and then they announced

2nd: Jason Shulman

I felt as though I had just won the Masters, even in 2nd place.

1st: Quique Somenzini

And it was finally done. Champaign was flying through the air and everyone
was smiling and laughing, it was finally over. Now we have to wait until
2006 for the next Masters.

Photo courtesy of Carol McKinney

RE: My Masters
 

The finalists airplanes.

Quique's Yak, Christophes Extra, Chips Extra and Marks Extra

RE: My Masters
 

Sebastiano's Katana and Peter's Cap

RE: My Masters
 

And a couple of my Extra and one with me, Scott and the Extra

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Here is the set-ups I used at the Masters:

Plane: Composite-ARF.com 3 Meter Extra, Shulman scheme
Radio: Futaba 9Z WC II
Servos: Futaba 9206's on ailerons (3 each) and elevators (2 each), 3-9152's
on rudder, 9602 on throttle and choke
Rx's: 2- Futaba 149 DP
Extra's: 3- Futaba MSA-10 servo matchers, 1 each aileron, 1 on 2 rudder
servos
Motor: RC Showcase ZDZ-160 Champion with Falkon Ignition
Exhaust: RC Showcase standard mufflers
Batteries: Duralite 1900 4-cell Li-Ion for Ign, 2- 3600 4-cell Li-Ions for
Rx's, 6-volt regulators on all
Props: AirModels 32.5x11 2-blade for patterns, 32x10 MenzS 2-blade for
freestyle
Spinner: Tru-Turn 5" P-51 spinner for patterns, none for freestyle
Smoke system: TME Simple Smoke 2, 24oz. Du-Bro tank
Graphics: Kirby's Kustom Graphics
Tail wheel: Graph-Tech RC 30lb carbon tail wheel with Mark Hale spring
assembly
Pilot: [link=http://www.composite-creations.com]Composite-Creations.com[/link] F-1 Pilot with last minute SA Custom paint job
Miscellaneous: Du-bro hardware, Shulman Aviation servo leads, J-TEC clamp
locks, Vel-Tye hook & loop, Jersey Modelers fuel can

Special thanks to:

Scott Anderson and the Anderson family
Kevin Young
Mark Hale and Hartness International
My Family
Dave Stodart
Pat and Mary-Lou Hartness
ALL of the Triple Tree/Confederate Air Farce group
ALL the judges and scribes
Warren Thomas
Don Lowe
Sean Plummer, Tim Garcia and Ric Fix
Frank Noll
Mike Dooley
Dennis and Debby Kirby
Ric Obenberger
Dan Rocha and Bill Prichett
Ivan Kristensen and Bob Hudson
Bryan Gillmore
Billy Hemple
Brad and Ed Hooper
Dan Alley
Ray Labonte and Andy Kane
And hopefully I'm not missing anyone else.

A couple of pictures of the Extra and a shot of the Composite-Creations.com F-1 Pilot.

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Hey Jas.. Great write up.. I understand what you meant in that email when we where emailing back and forth after reading this write up

Randy

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Jason, et,al,
I want you to know that I really appreciate you sharing this with us.
Thanks and don't stop,
Bob Ruppel
Nashville,TN

RE: My Masters
 

Jason:
Thanks for sharing this beautiful moment with us.

Regards.

OScar Silfa

RE: My Masters
 

Jason:
Congraulations on a job well done!

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Uhhhh, maybe, Don Lowe?! ;)

Great job at the Don Lowe Masters, Jason, and nice seeing you again.


Jon Lowe (somewhat related!)

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Great writeup! I do have a question though. Why no spinner for freestyle?

Mark Trent

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Congrats man! We heard you couldn't be at the NEAT Fair and of course we were all sad ;-) IT's awesome how well you did. You are a great pilot! Congrats man

Dan

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Thank you all.

No spinner and wood prop made it CG perfectly for the freestyle (added an aluminum Du-Bro spinner nut for addition tailweight...lol).

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Do you not fly DA anymore? how do you rate the zdz 160 to the DA you were flying?

RE: My Masters
 

Jason

Great write up, I could not make it up this year. Look forward the next Masters.

Look forward to seeing you again soon

Regards

Bryan Kennedy

RE: My Masters
 

Excellent stuff Jason, congrats on your placing. Also late congrats on your nats win, it's about time! :)

-Mike

RE: My Masters
 

Jason,

A great write up mate and dead set accurate as I was there to see it all. As I promised here is the photo of your ol buddy Andy getting his go home kiss. The 21 of you done damned well and I will be back in 2006 with a few more supporters from the southern continent.

Allan

RE: My Masters
 

Hey Jason, what is the ready to fly weight of your plane w/ no fuel?? I was thinking of getting the champion for my Hanger 9 ultimate. How is the performance??

Thanks, Lane

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

So Jason, no canisters? Imagin how you might have finished if you'd gotten better sound scores? LOL, couldn't help but pick.

Michael Ramsey

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Imagine how good the scores might have been if you had used both cylinders in all of your flights (VBG) Just using one jug does not make it quieter you know! (More grins).

It was fantastic watching you and Quique wait for the positions to be announced. I was delighted for you and thrilled for Quique. Thanks to all of the pilots for really great flying.

Eric.

RE: My Masters Equipment
 

Flyin: I am flying ZDZ now. I have not had a chance to see the comparison of my old DA to my new ZDZ, but since a friend of mine here locally bought my plane/motor after my accident at the Shootout last year, I can check it next time we're both out. I don't notice anything drastically different between them though.

Allan: You were supposed to delete that picture, not post it for the World to see....LOL. Great to meet you at the Masters. E-mail me at [email protected]

Lane: I have yet to weigh the plane yet. It is a bone stock Comp-ARF 3M Extra, so I guess about 36lbs or so. I would imagine that the ZDZ-160-C would work fine in the H9 Ultimate. Performance is similar to the DA.

Michael: You can get away with it THIS time...LOL. Looking back at the scores, it would have made no difference, although I do prefer the quieter set-up.

Eric: Both cylinders were running, I was just trying to use too much fuel while I was flying....LOL. I never did like breaking in any new motor during a contest, needles are always bound to change somewhere along the line. If you can't have fun competing, winning and "losing" then you shouldn't be flying.