Preliminaries Day #4

Up and off to Starbucks for our morning coffee drinks... the gals in the place are starting to know us well by now! Mark wanted to put in an early flight so we headed for Site #4. This is the farthest southern flight line in the huge complex and is easily accessed by the paved roads around the facility.

I put Mark’s name down on the sign up sheet and we waited for his turn. We watched several different planes fly then waited out the last glow powered plane before he launched. Unfortunately the glow did the sequence almost twice due to the huge fuel tank it must have had.. 16 minutes easily!

Team Japan... spotless!

After some practice elements, time was moving closer to Mark’s flight this morning at  8:51 am. We packed up and headed to Hartley’s trailer to swap my plane out for Mark’s back up. Time was beginning to become a factor when we noticed Hartley’s truck was gone. He had moved Mark’s B plane to the #1 site. Great job HH to save us some precious moments.

The planes were quickly assembled and he was on the flight line with time to spare. The rest of the team & supporters arrived and Mark took to the skies in front of the judging panel. He had another good round with some minor errors but he was happy with his efforts. The team cheered as his wheels touched down and Hartley pulled out a “Go Canada Go” banner that got the judges laughing. All in fun of course.

Mark and the gang.

Dezo was up next and he too put in another solid round of flying. Once again minor errors but still very respectable. Another cheer erupted as he touched down. Overall I think Dez was happy with his efforts and learned a lot this past week.

Dez and the gang again.

As Chad was later in the day we headed into town for a bite to eat and a stop at Walmart for some hardware for Hartley’s trailer water connection. (minor valve leak temporarily remedied!) I drove in with Paul Hepworth who came down to support the team. Paul had a small electrical problem with his plane and although he had planned to fly in the Nationals next week, he came anyway! Now that’s support! (Turns our Ac Glenn is lending Paul a plane & radio to compete in the Nationals after all... Ac gets an official Team Canada Maple Syrup Sampler for being such a great person!)

Chad's turn.

Look who showed up!  Ivan with these new glasses. They are a new technology that show 45 and 90 degree angles.... imposed into your field of view... it's the next greatest training device for pattern :-)

Kelly, Robyn and Pat all took off in search of the Amish lands and were doing a mini "vacation within a vacation" type thing... shopping and sightseeing.

Chad was up in the afternoon and put in a good round with some very solid elements. He did had a few bobbles along the way on this flight. He was a bit apprehensive about the score but still came out strong.

Final scores for preliminary rounds are here.(in pdf format)

Chad completed this portion of the contest in 18th with a normalized score for his three best P rounds of 2710.10. Dez finished in 44th with a 2468.98 and Mark in 50th with 2441.73. The scores are fairly tight so a couple of points can propel you in either direction.. quickly! The top thirty pilots advanced to the next step in the competition on Sunday. They will fly once each at site #1 and site #3 respectively with one AM and one PM time slot.

With Chad moving on to the semi-finals I attended a meeting of the team mangers to draw the starting order for Sunday’s semi’s... I drew #2 for Chad. It’s up to Chad to bring his A game to the worlds and this is pretty much what he lives for aside from family of course.  We will all be behind him in the coming days.

We went home exhausted but plan to head to our practice field in the morning as both Hartley and I need to get in some practice rounds for the upcoming Nationals.

Both work and home life requires them to leave Muncie today.... Special thanks to Xavier and Spencer for helping to support the team over the last week. X-man was awesome on the camera and the flight line helping Dez!

More pictures added to the team site

Flight order for Sunday’s semi finals.