2004 Nationals

I loaded up my RV with enough supplies to last a month, together with my competition turbine Lama and my “other” turbine Lama. I took the second one as the competition model had a special exhaust on it which needed polishing after flying and before static. Rather than do that I elected to take the second one and practice with that. I set off on the 1000 miles journey to Muncie Indiana on the Thursday, even though it was only a day and a half drive and registration was not until Sunday night. I wanted to meet up with my friend Dr Tim Dawson and get a little practice in before the competition.

Sunday evening drew in and we attended the pilots meeting, to be told about when the FAI, Class 3,2 and 1 competitions were to be held and who was judging who etc etc etc. When I had the temerity to ask about the judges for scale, I was told that our pilots meeting would be the next day at 10 am! Not a very auspicious start. Sure enough, next day, we had our meeting to be told we would have our static judging done during the lunch break when the Class 3 pilots seconded for scale judging would be available. I questioned the rules. A set of rules I had never seen before arrived in my mailbox on the previous Monday, the rules I was told would be used were on Joe Howard’s web site and in the AMA magazine, Steve Kaluf, the competitions director, proudly stated that all the rules to be used in 2005 were on the web site. A quick check showed last years rules were there, so, we had 3 sets of rules and the CD, IRCHA chief Ron Kummel allowed us to fly in any sequence we liked as long as we called the maneuvers before we flew them.

Judging time came and first up was Bob Harris with his beautiful Hirobo Dauphin with a 4 blade head. He was followed by Jeff Wright with a Hirobo Tiger and then Dr Tim with his Len Mount turbine Cobra. I was last. I went into the lead with 839 points out of 900, followed by Bob Harris with 746, Dr Tim with 701 and Jeff Wright with 421. Although I was feeling pretty confident at this time, I had never seen Bob Harris fly and he was a flying instructor, so I wasn’t counting my chickens just yet. Dr Tim was a little down on the points because he had a flybar head on his machine, but one of the judges gave him 20 out of 15!

Later, we had a discussion about when we were going to fly. Bob wanted to fly early as he had an overheating problem and wanted the cool morning air, but his suggestion of flying at 6.30 am was not a popular one. I wanted to fly at 8.00am as the sun was sufficiently above the horizon that I wouldn’t have to fly through it, but I was told that would eat up too much of the FAI guys time! We ended up electing to go at 7.30 am next morning in the same order as we had static judged, which left me flying at about 8.00am as I wanted.

Later on that evening, when the wind died down, I decided that a test flight on my competition Lama would be a good idea so I took it out to the flightline and spooled the turbine up. As it got to full speed it didn’t look right, being light on the skids. I looked down at my transmitter to see if something was wrong there and when I looked back, the wind had got under the model and it was tipping over on its side! There was that sickening scrunch of broken blades and a smashed rotor head as I shut the turbine down. Dr Tim was behind me and nearly collapsed in a dead faint but Bob brought him a chair so he could sit down. I picked up the pieces and started back to my RV, wondering, if I left that night, could I get far enough so I would be home the next day.

By the time I got back to the RV, Bob had left for his hotel, probably thinking the Nats was in the bag for him, even if it was an unfortunate way to win. At that point, I looked at the debris closely, and decided, I could rebuild it! It would be better, faster than before……..sorry, too much 6 million dollar man and AOL ads. The damage was in the head, blades and transmission. I had the other machine I could use as a donor, but the biggest problem was that the stripped gears were right in the middle of the helicopters. It took me 3 hours to get the parts I needed and another hour to rebuild them into the competition model. I fired up the turbine to check it and then spent another hour replacing all of the scale parts I had removed. By midnight I was ready to test fly it, but decided bed was a better alternative.

I couldn’t sleep. I was so wired, had I loctited everything, were all the connections right, would it hold together? Finally at about 2am I dropped off to sleep, only to wake at 4.30am. I got up and had a cup of tea, well that’s what English guys do you know. I went outside at 5.00am, I needed the blades from Dr Tims trailer and I knew he wouldn’t be up that early, so I went round his RV a few times in the gravel just in case he was awake. ½ hour later, I could stand it no more and I knocked on his door. It opened immediately and there he was, showered shaved and dressed. I wonder why he was up so early.

I fitted the blades and we went out for an early test flight and it hovered just fine, with a slight tracking problem that we worked on through about a gallon of fuel. Once we had it dialed in pretty good, but not perfect, I did a few practice maneuvers and then I put it away and had a cup of coffee. Well, I’m learning to be American.

8.30am arrived, with the judges ready to go and I wheeled out the Lama to the flightline. A few people were surprised to se it there, ready to go. Bob flew first and his Dauphin was a bit of a handful, but he managed a score of 177 plus 50 points for a flybarless bonus. Jeff flew next and his model was losing power all the time so he curtailed his free flight for a score of 136.5. Dr Tim went up next and his Cobra had a very waggy tail, like a happy dog. It was fine in forward flight but his other maneuvers were a bit ragged but he scored a creditable 209. Then it was my turn and I was a bit nervous for the model and flew fairly well to get 258 plus 50 points flybarless bonus.

Bob was then told to fly his second round immediately as we were delaying the FAI guys and although his motor hadn’t completely cooled down, he flew again. This time it did over heat and he lost power big time. He tried to get back to the pad to call complete but ran out of power and it tipped over on landing, breaking a blade and a couple of ball links. He was very lucky, but it hit him hard in the points, scoring only 47 plus his 50 point bonus. Jeff flew next and his second flight was also curtailed for lack of power and he scored 117.

It was Dr Tims turn now, and he was on a roll as he figured he could edge Bob out for 2^nd place if he flew well, and he did, scoring 210. I was up last and I was totally relaxed now. I flew the best I had ever done at a competition and scored 68 out of 70 from each of the judges in the freeflight section. My total was 268 plus 50 bonus points. We were then told we could fly another round during the FAI/Class 3 lunch break if we wanted, but the wind had sprung up and no one could change their position in the results so we elected to eat lunch instead.

The final scores came out, normalized, at 3000 to me, 2174 for Dr Tim and 1931 to Bob Harris with Jeff Wright bringing up the rear with 1312.

Due to the AMA treating us as second class citizens and fitting us in when it didn’t inconvenience the other pilots, I have decided this will be my last Nationals. My models take me 10 times as long to build, cost 10 times as much and I have to practice just as hard as the other pilots, I pay the same AMA contribution and Nationals entry fee, but I was made to feel like I was in the way this year. I have to say all of the other pilots came out and watched as we flew and we did manage to get to fly on the same field as the other guys and weren’t shunted off into the corn field at the back as we have been on previous years. It’s no wonder there are so few entries at the scale Nationals. If you check on the results page at the IRCHA website, the static scores are up for Monday, but that’s all.