My personal thanks goes to all who helped with the organizing, planning, timing, judging and participating in the events.
The "Grand Prize" was an electric "Decathalon" airplane, complete with radio, motor, esc, servos, battery and charger! It was a great looking little airplane.
John, at Hobbytown, in lieu of donating a gift certificate, gave the club a great deal by reducing the price by 1/3. It really helped a lot. Thanks John!
Fox Hobbies supported the club by donating four gallons of fuel and a dozen glow plugs to be used for individual event prizes! At today's prices that was a big donation!
Fox has traditionally helped the club for as long as I can remember… Thanks to all the folks at Fox and especially to Charlie Thacker and Harold Wille!
I will outline the events, rules and outcome for each event, then the overall scores and Grand Prize winner in the paragraphs that follow. I think you will enjoy it:
"Spot Landing":
The rules for this event were pretty simple. We used flour to put a "spot" in the middle of
the Main runway. We then drew a 6 foot diameter circle around the spot. A second circle was drawn even
larger centered on the spot. You can see the layout by clicking on the photo below of Russ Thurston's
attempt.
A pilot was given two "attempts" at landing with the proviso that on the first attempt, if he realized
he was not going to score big, he could "go around" for a second attempt without touching the ground.
All pilots were told that FIRST TOUCHDOWN of the wheels was the scoring mark. Once the wheels of the
aircraft touched the ground his turn was over!
If he hit the "spot" he received 100 points, If he touched down within the first circle he received 60 points. If he touched down within the largest circle he received 40 points. No points were awarded for any other point.
Chad Voelkel went first flying his Scale J-3 Cub shown at right. His landing was looking like it might be a high score until at the very last second a wind gust picked the cub up and slammed it to the ground beyond the largest circle… Zero points!
TAG, the AMA has it!
Josh has completed the paperwork for the Flightmaster MAC to participate in this program. You may
be interested in reading the following from the AMA...
Do you want to introduce model aviation to your friends and neighbors and receive local recognition and financial benefits in return? If you answered “yes,” then you’ll want to know more about AMA’s "Take Off and Grow" (TAG) program.
Developed to encourage our members and clubs to promote modeling as a positive recreational activity to those in their communities, TAG was the first of several new programs implemented by AMA in 2007.
Intended to indoctrinate and welcome the general public to our hobby, TAG basically provides a one-day extensive introduction of model aviation with the intent of drawing new people into our hobby. This is followed by a flight training program for new members gained from the opening-day activities.
Here’s how TAG works: clubs applying to host a TAG Model Aviation Day will be provided with a complete program “requirements and guidelines” document to use as a guide. This document will include ideas on pre-promoting and advertising your event as well as an outline of possible activities to take place during the actual day of the event.
Clubs will be encouraged to preregister attendees to help them better prepare. Each attendee will also be entered into the AMA’s newly revised Introductory Pilot Program (IPP).