SPA West Open Championships
Ft Worth, TX
October 12-13, 2013

What a weekend for flying! The wind usually blows 10 to 20 MPH this time of year, as it did on Friday during practice. The forecast was for showers for Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes the forecasters miss and this time it was good. Pilots were greeted with light winds from the south on Saturday and light north to east winds Sunday with enough clouds to cover the "in your face" sun.

After a brief pilots meeting, flying began with two flight lines going all day with a brief break for hamburgers, chips and drinks. Expert judging was provided by Chuck Ezell and Dale Sparks on Saturday and supplemented on Sunday by Rick Byrd, along with pilots. There was only one crash when Jerry Joyner, who is a past pattern pilot just coming back into the sport, was flying low and apparently thought he was inside the tree line, smacked his new Dirty Birdy into the top of one of the tall trees. Jerry said he will be back to fly SPA again.

The fierce competition between first and second was decided by less than 50 points, except in Expert where Jamie Strong won every round and won by over 135 normalized points and there was some excellent flying by the other experts. Novice was decide by less than 18 points and Advanced by about 20.

Doug Harvel and Tom Stennis again kept us entertained with their Mississippi humor. We had pilots from Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kansas and Alabama to join all the Texas guys.The help we had to keep things moving was excellent including flight bosses, score entry, score runners, registration, cooks and scoring. A special thanks goes to Leo Steck at Klass Kote Missouri and Allen Worley of Planet Hobby for the donation of a NovaRossi engine and Roy and Pat of Roy's Toys for Boys for the donation of an OS 55AX engine for our pilot raffle and Leo Steck of Klass Kote Missouri for the donation of a pint of their paint and hardener.

We love to fly models and we must also love to eat. Hamburgers, chips, cookies and drinks were provided both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night had the biggest pot of chicken and dumplings I have ever seen.

Here in Texas we are seeing a great improvement in all who are flying the SPA Pattern venue. It is great to see the improvements of most of our pilots who are working through the maneuvers and seem to be enjoying it immensely. We are hearing a lot of pilots say how much fun they are having practicing, the fellowship, flying, and of course a bit of friendly competition to brag about is always fun. But most of all it’s the fellowship and friendship with the common interest which is bringing us all together.

Scores have been posted on the SPA Forum and the Thunderbird website forum so I won't repeat them here.

Thanks to everyone who came and thanks for all the kind words. We really appreciate it.

Ken Knotts

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