I am planning on showing up Friday early afternoon/evening. My dad will not be competing, but I am looking forward to having a good time.

Matt Finley

Well if Matt's going to be there, Aleta and I will be there sometime saturday.

Whats the scoop?  Everyone stay dry?

How was Cow and Combat??????

Everyone got three rounds today. We had one delay for rain but things went pretty smoothly. I think there are about 37 pilots.
Weather alternated between very dark and drizzly and bright sunshine. Dark and drizzly for Sportsman, Intermediate and FAI, bright sun for Masters and Advanced.
The steaks were exceptional this year, the best I've had at this event.
Lots of fireworks!

Scott

Yes, steaks were great (and desserts and salads and potatoes and...), fireworks were a lot of fun (didn't have them last year, so this was my first year seeing them, lots of fun!). Put my foamy in the ground on maiden, but having the best scores of my life in a pattern contest more than made up for that!

Dennis made it, albeit car troubles and I'm sure a great amount of discomfort - but great to have him around.

Chris from F3A Unlimited made it out with some great new equipment on display, including a tremendous display of power with the Pletty Inrunner in his contest plane (even needed to dial back to 90% full power, still pulled the plane out of the stratosphere). Everyone really likes the new Nuance too.

Hello,

Any chance that anyone could post photos of the event for those of us not lucky enough to attend?

Thanks,

Teo

Sorry Teo I dont have any pictures but, you have to make it down next year. What a great time! Thanks to Bob and Amy and their crew for have us thanks Mark steering the ship. We will be back next year for sure.



Bill

Great contest thanks everyone.
The food and fireworks were off the hook! They had the kind of Pyro display that you see on the4th of July! Serious stuff.
My lil foamy has 10 burn marks on the bottom of the wings but survived the array of bottle rockets and roman candles shooting at it.
To the best of my memory here are the winners.
38 pilots evenly spread across all the classes except Sportsman.
Sportsman 1st Bill Kutchell..... he was spectacular for a beginner and is going to be very good in the next class
Intermediate Brandon Sobieski.Against huge competition from Sean Atwood and Ron Hanson.
Advanced Anthony Abdullah. He flew great!!!
Masters by winning both rounds on Sunday Verne Koester. NoIrish jigeitherwhile getting the trophy. A pretty big smile was enough.
FAI Dave Snow flying the Wind Pro/ Genesis hybrid with the Contra drive. He and it flew fantastic as did everyone in FAI.
My bad if I misspelled any of the names above.All the classes were close and there was a lot of really good flying.
All in all a great way to end a very successful season.
I have to admit that there is something special about traveling to a D4 contest.
On behalf of Brandon and myself I want to thank everyone for all the encouragement and support we received all season long. For me personally mentoring a 12 year old was a thrill and something that I never thought I'd have the opportunity to do. I kind of think in a funny way I was meant to have this happen to me. We had an absolute blast.
Mike Mueller

What were the standings?

I'll try and post the full standings as well as the D4 Champions shortly.

Thanks everyone for the support.  We (Pannell's and I) truly appreciate the dedication to the event that everyone makes to head out on a long trip with a VERY foreboding weather forecast.  But everyone came despite the 60% rain predictions and we ended up with fairly decent weather and a great contest because your support. 

I also want to thank everyone publicly for the excellent cooperation in being prepared to fly, getting into the judges chair for some long session, and overall making contest operations simple with such a big group.  It allowed us to get in 185 flights in 13 hours of flying which got everyone 5 rounds and back on the road by 3pm Sunday. 

I'll see if I can get some various photos posted too.

Tried to post some pics but get the all too familiar RCU response:

500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

I want to thank the Pannell's, too. They're like the two by fours in your wall, you don't notice them, but if they weren't there your house would fall down. All the behind the scenes details were covered, from scoring, running scoresheets and finding lost airplane parts to a great meal and a good supply of sharp knives for the steaks!
This was my third visit to the D4 Champs and it's better every year. It takes a lot of cooperation to get five rounds in with that many pilots, and I think we might have got six if we wouldn't have had a rain delay on Saturday.

My only complaint is that it was consistently dark and cloudy when my class (Intermediate) flew, bright and sunny (with angels playing harps) for the Masters!

Scott

Scott I didn't hear those harps playing. I think the fireworks blew out my eardrums. Mike

We have to thank Frankie for the clearly illegal fireworks.  Those were concussion grenades with sparks.  Not to mention all those that financially donated for the effort. 

Lastly, another thanks to Frankie, and Anthony for risking life and limb to set those incendiaries off while airplanes were buzzing overhead in the dark, mostly out of control.
Not to mention that they were in the landing zone of all the rockets being fired at the planes. 

Between the volt jolt in Muncie at the first contest and your eardrums now, maybe you shoulda taken up golf

Looking forward to seeing everyone next spring (geez, 8 months)
<br type="_moz" />

So what FAI patterns were flown? 4-2? Should I ask someone who was there? lol

Ummm... Joe, weren't you watching???

We flew 5 rounds of P-13.   Unfortunately F-13 still seems to be in flux as we found 3 different versions of it...all from the CIAM site.  Combine that with no one having really practiced any of it, P-13 seemed like enough challenge for the weekend.

I would also like to say thanks for the help i received while i was down there. Local club members included. Including a ride to the field after my freeking ford trans took a poop. Including a ride to the rental car place. Figuring out where the ford dealership was and a host of other small details that would have ruined my trip.
I did stick around for the steak and some of the night fly. The fireworks are getting better every year. Looks like i will be down there again this week to pick up my van maybe thursday.

Here are the contest results, sorry I could not make it Sunday, it looked like beautiful weather. I ended up having the best weekend; flew in a nice contest and spent a wonderful day with my daughter in college.

Ray

Ray,

Did you forget something?    <br type="_moz"/>

I keep getting an error 500 when I try to attach the result pictures, I have tried JPG, BMP, TIF, smaller files, still trying.

Ray

Sportsman

Intermediate