The 2nd SASS TD contest of the 2004 season took place under overcast skies with the first rain drop holding off until right before the last pilot launched in the last round ending at 2pm. 5 rounds of pilots choice were flown. Thanks go to Bill Kulh who didn’t fly in the contest, but kept the winches running in good order and retrieved most of the 100 launches.
The lift was there, but was definitely coming and going in cycles. There were quite a few 10 minute flights taking advantage of some stationary wave lift over the SW area of the west hill.
Gordy Stalh from Kentucky arrived Friday late afternoon and was able to get a couple of landings in at the field before it got too dark. Gordy travels on business and gets to fly at locations all over the country and managed to end up with the Thermal Wizard trophy and 2nd place in Open-Expert class behind Sherman Knight. This is Sherman’s 2nd straight 1st place win this year…nice flying (and landing) Sherman! Sherman took the Thermal Wizard trophy at the April contest. That makes 2 for Sherman. Former sportsman flyer Rick Helgeson took 3rd in Open-Expert class just 89 points out of first place.
Sherman’s 12 year old son Michael flew with the big dogs and took 2nd place in 2-meter, crushing 3rd place Tor Burkhart by 1,348 points. We won't mention the fact that if you combined all the classes into one report, Michael came in 9th place out of 19 pilots...a mere 73 points behind Russ. Doug Brusig took 1st place in 2-Meter with 4,637 of a possible 5,000 points.
Roy Stubs brought flying buddy Jerry Neupert to fly in his first TD contest. Jerry took 3rd place in novice class. Dave Brombaugh came in 2nd place in the novice class flying the club trainer. Ted Garman was 1st in the novice class.
Dave Beardsley was flying the coolest looking plane at the contest…the “Curly que” er, I mean the Moebius. You can see a picture of it here: http://www.icare-rc.com/moebius.htm