Event Report

By Oscar Weingart

U.S. Scale Masters 28^th Annual Championships

October 11-14, 2007

Hemet Model Airpark

Hosted by the Hemet Model Masters

 (Please note that these event reports were originally prepared for use in the Riverside RC Club monthly newsletter, Prop talk, and are not intended to be comprehensive coverage of the event. Rather they are reports, for our club members, of my personal experiences and perceptions.)

Introduction

            The events leading up to my participation in the Championships are discussed in two other event reports on this web site:  The Scale Masters Qualifier at Hemet; and the Scale Masters Qualifier at Sepulveda Basin.  In the latter meet, my Balsa USA 1/3 Scale Ercoupe qualified for the Championships by winning first in Team Scale, with Carl Lindou as Pilot.

First Day

            Thursday, October 11, was devoted to registration and static judging.  There were about 50 contestants and 20 or more RVs were dry camped at the field.  Beautiful models abounded, including the gorgeous P-38 that won the Grand Champion Award at the 2006 Championships.  Several vendors, including Balsa USA, had booths set up.

Dennis Crook and his Lightning

            I was slotted into an early empty time slot for static judging, and I was all registered and judged by 9:30 AM. There were four static judges, one each for outline, color, markings and craftsmanship.  I had to show the Coupe in a front view, left side view, top view and bottom view. (The latter two views were achieved by taking the Ercoupe off the judging table and standing it on its spinner in the wood nose wheel chock I had made, to replace the high–tech dirty sneaker.)  The static judging scores would be made available after the first round of flying on Friday.

Second Day

            Friday, October 12, was the first day of flying.  It should have been Friday the 13^th, as just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong!  My car key got somehow stuck in the ignition switch, and would not turn and could not be removed.  By jiggling and cursing, I finally got it free.  Carl and I both got to the field by 8:30, to find that the Pilot’s Meeting was already over, and that our team was to be second to fly on flight line 3 (of 4 flight lines).  Those Scale Masters, whom I have kidded about always starting late, actually started ahead of schedule! 

            We hurried to assemble the Ercoupe, while being informed that the first pilot scheduled for line 3 had scratched, so we were now number one to fly at 9AM!  One aileron extension cable had dropped inside the fuselage’s stub wing, something that happened before, and is usually solved by fishing the wire out with a hook.  In this case, the cable had somehow gotten pushed back beyond the second rib from the end and could not be fished out.  This has never happened before!

            I hurriedly removed the pilot’s seat and pilot, to get at the other end of the aileron extension from the inside of the cabin.  But the sliding window on that side of the plane would not budge, and the cable is beneath the sliding window when the window is down, so we needed to raise that window to get at the wire.  This stuck window has also never happened before!  Talk about Murphy’s Law!

            By this time, it was obvious that we could never make the 9AM start of flying, so we requested a “Mulligan”, (a reschedule.)  We understand that one can get one Mulligan per day.  We were given an extra half hour, which eventually became an hour due to frequency conflicts.  I got the window unstuck by brute force, and managed to pull the cable through by using a wire hook and a piece of fuel tubing.

            Once we got started, Carl flew the Coupe nicely.  We had replaced the 20-8 APC propeller with a 24-6 Zinger, in order to slow the plane to a more scale-looking speed.  The weather was overcast and almost dead calm.  We flew our standard set of non-aerobatic maneuvers and landed without incident.  The Scale Masters did a good job of air traffic control, with four planes often in the air at one time.

            I was very pleased to learn that my static score from Thursday was 94.25.  This was 6 points higher than I got at the Qualifier, probably due to some added details on the model and improved documentation. 

       Carl’s first flight score was 84, a bit less than we got for the first flight at the Qualifier.  He had improved greatly with each flight at the Qualifier, and we both felt that his second Championships flight, later in the afternoon, would also score higher tan his first.  We would not learn that score until the next day.

            The plan was to have two rounds each on Friday and Saturday, and one final round on Sunday morning, with awards in the afternoon.  The best three of the five flight round scores are averaged to get the final flight score. This is added to the static score to get the final total score.

            Friend Paul Bowman from the Santa Fe Dam Club, spent the day at the meet, and the three of us went out for dinner after the end of flying.

Third day

      Saturday, October 13, started out with rain showers, but improved toward afternoon.  The flight order was reversed, so we didn’t fly until almost lunch time in the third round, and late in the afternoon in the fourth round.  We got some wind and turbulence on the fourth round in the afternoon.  Carl’s scores were now 84, 93, and 91.

There was a fine opening ceremony, with a color guard and a Russian jet fighter low altitude fly-by. 

 Later, there was another fly-by, also on the deck, of a Beech 18.

            We attended the Saturday night banquet, where RRCC member Don Lien, who was one of the Scale Masters founding members 28 years ago, was honored with a special trophy.  Don got to reminisce for the audience about the old days of RC Scale.  

Don and another founder, Jerry Ortega, pose with their awards

            Rich Hanson, AMA District X Vice President, attended the Banquet with Mrs. Hanson.  Hanson is running for AMA President.  Rich gave a nice speech, and presented the Hemet Model Masters with an AMA Gold Leader Club Award.  Rich also attended the meet on Saturday and Sunday

Fourth day

            On Sunday, there was a fly-by of a T-28.  We flew early again, and had ideal calm, sunny weather.  We learned that Carl had achieved a 90.5 on the fourth round on Saturday. At the start of this last round, we were in second place, but the second, third and fourth place scores were all very close, so everything would depend on the outcome of the last round.  Carl flew a beautiful flight, and got 94.75, his best score yet.  However, the nice weather also enabled the other two close competitors to get good flight scores, so we dropped to fourth place, as shown below:

TEAM SCALE RESULTS 

                                                                                                                         Avg. best    Final

Place                                                                                               Static      3 flights     Total

            Even fourth place was more than we ever expected to achieve, so we were well satisfied with the results.  Prizes were awarded down to eighth place, with trophies for the first three places, and plaques for the remainder.  

Carolyn Van Heck, Bill Hart, Carl Lindou, and Oscar

Larry Klingberg and Dan Egelhoff with the Third Place Trophies

First Place Team Scale, a Superb Stinson

            Expert Scale was won by Dennis Crook with his incredible P-38.  This made Dennis Grand Champion for the second year in a row.

            The Scale Masters Championships were a classy, well-run event, and Bill Hart, Carolyn Van Heck, and the rest of their crew, along with host Hemet Model Masters, are to be commended for their obvious hard work and good planning.

            For the full results of the meet, along with over a thousand (literally) great photos, click here. 

            The selected photos used above are courtesy of the Scale Masters.

BACK