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Scores                                               Photos

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The Pilots
L-R: Dave Phillips, Jamie Strong, Joe Ryan, Paul Higginbotham, Greg Hoke, John Wolfe, Jeff Owens & Robert Lane

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Inaugural Georgia Aircraft Modelers Association SPA Contest

Lori and I arrived at the beautifully prepared GAMA RC field at about 1:30 on Friday afternoon. After getting the RV situated I proceeded to get in some practice rounds. To say that it was HOT would be an understatement, but we knew what to expect and the weather forecasters were not wrong. Late in the afternoon it clouded up and the temps went down a bit. We could see storms around us, but nothing at the field. However, on my last flight the sky was showing sparks that were getting closer, so I packed everything away and did some socializing. Everyone was talking about how nice some rain would be – and then we felt a few drops. And more drops. And then the sky let loose! It thundered and rained for several hours. There was a lot of water flowing over the geotex runway.

Saturday morning dawned with dryer conditions and about a 10 degree drop in the forecast high temp for the day. Clear skies prevailed with a nice breeze – right down the runway. The field dried out nicely and conditions were great for the start of the contest. A number of scheduled contestants were unable to make it for a variety of reasons, so we had a total of eight contestants. That made for short rounds and we only flew on one flight line. By 4:00 pm we had four rounds completed with part of the fifth, as well.

Saturday saw some mishaps with Jamie Strong losing a brand new ESC on his electric. The dead stick landing saw the landing gear depart the airframe (Dave Phillips will do the repair.) Dave had the misfortune of crashing his Bootlegger when he ran out of altitude and airspeed on a turnaround. The wing was pretty much okay, but the fuselage was convincingly rekitted.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday weatherwise. Just beautiful conditions! We completed rounds 5 and 6 and were done by 11:30 AM. The scores are shown elsewhere in this report.

I was handling the computer scoring with Lori helping me record and check the scores. As I entered the last score for the last contestant in the last round, the computer crashed! I was not able to get it to work again, so the final round was tallied by hand by Greg and Debbie. Here’s the rest of the story… On Monday I started up the computer at home and checked the scoring program. Everything worked! All the scores were there and I was able to print the results and send them to Jim. Jim suspects that the computer overheated since it worked fine at my house even though it was behaving quite strangely at the field. For the next contest we will have two computers available…

The GAMARC field is a beautiful facility, well suited to hosting an SPA contest. My thanks got to the Club and its officers for hosting us at such a great site. I certainly am looking forward to a return engagement. Now we have to get the word out so that we will have more contestants next year. Centrally located in Georgia, this is one that you won’t want to miss next year!

Jeff Owens

Final Scores
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