Planes
Over El Dorado
Race organizer Loren Tregellas and his lovely wife Martha
did a superb job of putting on this event and the participants and spectators all had a
great time. Wednesday was dedicated to
setting up the race course, pits and grandstands, as well as putting the early arrivals
through technical inspection. Thursday
morning saw the continuation of tech inspections followed by a pilot’s meeting and
racing in the afternoon. One round of each
class was completed which included Dominator, Biplane, AT-6, Formula-1, Unlimited and
Experimental. The weather was warm and the
winds were light as everyone set out to shake the rust off of their thumbs after a long
off-season. After racing was completed on
Thursday, the racers and their families and crews were invited to El Dorado’s
restored historic train depot where the city put on a free cookout to welcome us. The food was great and the mayor even came out to
greet us and make us feel at home.
We put in two more rounds of racing on Friday under sunny
blue skies and the race workers did a fine job of keeping things rolling. Loren had a good crew handling the flight line
duties, and the administrative people had no problems keeping the scoring up to date with
the new computer matrix system. They also
drove around the pits handing out the sheets with the next round of racing…talk about
service!
Two more rounds of racing followed on Saturday with the
wind picking up in the afternoon. Thankfully
Mother Nature kept it down the runway for the most part and our pilots handled it very
well. Attrition was pretty light in the USRA
Championship classes, but the Dominators lost a few airplanes to the
fickle-finger-of-fate. Even after a less than
perfect landing these pilots still had a big racing grin on their faces! In the evening Loren put on a banquet in town for
the racers and the workers. The heartland
hospitality and down-home cooking were fantastic! Before
and during dinner, a slide show displayed pictures of the pilots, crews, and airplanes
taken during the first three days of racing. The
photographs were a big hit with the participants.
We flew round six on Sunday morning with the wind again
keeping us on our toes. During the lunch
break we were entertained by a great noon-time show that included skydivers, IMAC
aerobatic displays, a scale six-engine B-36 bomber, and the flight of a big ½ scale
GeeBee. The trophy races were held after lunch with the continuing challenge of the wind,
but much milder temperatures. We completed
the race by mid-afternoon and sent the trophy race competitors to the nearby hangar for
post-race technical inspection which included weight and engine checks. Loren then handed out the beautiful crystal and
wood trophies that included a photo of the racer and his aircraft.
Loren’s new pylon lights and timing and scoring
system operated much better this year, and all of his hard work in the winter definitely
paid off. We had to rerun a couple of races,
but they were due to airplane misidentification at the pylons. Loren also had an
additional countdown clock positioned so the fans and crew could see it. This was a nice touch and helped the spectators
distinguish when the racing actually began. Thanks Loren for the hard work on your
equipment. Also in use at this race was the
new matrix program developed by Tom Easterday and Kelley Hartranft. This program has many new features beyond the
standard score keeping and matrix generation and it is very easy to use. Loren’s race personnel did all of the data
entry and matrix generation with the new software and were very happy with it. The development costs and labor for this program
were donated by Tom and Kelley and on behalf of the membership I want to thank them. Ralph Cunningham of R/C Ignition also donated his
time to the USRA for inspection of the T-6 and F-1 motors…Thanks R.C..
Again, I want to thank Loren and his crew for a great job
in putting together this event for us. I also
want to thank the racers for coming out and supporting this event and making it a big
success. Loren and the city of El Dorado are
ready to have us back again next year, and I know that we are all looking forward to it. Here are the results, and congrats to everyone.
USRA World Championship Series Round
One
Planes Over El Dorado
Lynda
French has been our Membership Coordinator for many years now, and works tirelessly for
the Association processing membership applications, depositing funds, distributing reports
and rules, and many other tasks that we need done. I
don’t think I have ever heard Lynda publicly thanked for her hard work, and I blew a
golden opportunity to do so. Her hard work
is very much appreciated by me and I am sure by all of our members.
Stacy
Hanbury our new Secretary was also on hand, and Stacy has already been busy keeping me up
to date and in line! She has helped us quite
a bit already and I wanted to thank her as well. My
apologies to these fine people who deserve recognition and thanks for their hard work.
We
have a new web site address for our home page at www.usrainfo.org .
This will hopefully be up and running by the time you read this. If it’s
possible, I’m going to try to keep our old address as well. We’ll have race results and more up on the
page as soon as we get all the data transferred. Keep
checking in for the updates.
North Coast Challenge:
Well, Round Two in the USRA World
Championship Series is quickly approaching so start making plans soon. I had the chance to spend a little time with Tony
Husak and Chris Justus and their plans for the race are shaping up great. Steak and corn-on-the-cob will be ready for the
hungry racers at the cookout Saturday night, as if you needed another reason to go! Send in your entry fee early so you can get the
early registration discount. The promoters
will have all of the USRA Championship classes, as well as Dominator and Warbird 6.0. More information is available on our website at www.usrainfo.org.
Zenoah
GT-80 upgrade:
Another hard-working USRA member is Don
Moden. Don has arranged for USRA members to
purchase an upgrade kit for Zenoah 445s to turn them into GT-80s for next year’s
displacement increase. The kit will include
pistons, rings, and cylinders, and will be very affordable.
He is currently getting the names of everyone who wants an upgrade kit so
that they can be ordered for fall delivery. Get
in touch with him at the races so you don’t miss out on this opportunity, and thanks
Don for your help.
AMA Insurance
Issues:
The Academy of Model Aeronautics has
recently indicated that it is seriously looking at changes that could impact giant scale
racing. It is up to our members to voice
their opinions on this matter to their AMA Representatives.
I would encourage you as a member of the USRA to get informed on this topic
and let the AMA know how you feel. You can
start by contacting Fred French who has been following this issue closely and has a
proposal that he is working on to present to the AMA’s Executive Committee. Fred’s email address is FWFFrench@netscape.net
Well that’s all for now, I look
forward to seeing you all in Ashtabula !
Ken McSpadden