NNPRCC
Sixth Annual Scale Contest

8 July, 2006

Our Fun Scale Championship and Sport Scale meet this year was held on a perfect day for a contest. The forecast was for temperatures in the low eighties with light winds. They got it right! As you will notice in the photos, we had blue skies and white puffy clouds most of the day. I'm not even sure if we reached eighty degrees and what wind we had was right down the runway. 

We were hoping to begin registration at eight and start flying at eight thirty. Well, at eight thirty, we had three contestants. We waited a little longer and finally two more arrived. We only had one entrant in Sport Scale and he also flew in Fun Scale, so we had six flights per round.  

I don't know why we only had five contestants. It could have been the change of our contest date.  We had been having it the week  after the Warbirds Over Delaware, but they changed their date. We moved our date forward to accommodate another club who had a Scale Fly-in scheduled on our selected date. To those who didn't come this year, you missed a great day of flying and fun! I hope we will see you next year.

When I arrived at about seven o-clock, one person was already at the field flying and a contestant from Maryland had his beautiful top Flight P-47 set up and was ready for a practice flight. Some early arrivals are shown setting up.

The tents above contain four of the six models which were entered in the contest.

Our three Static judges are hard at work on Bill Lepley's great looking Newport. 
From Left are Dave Fisk,  Phil Greasley, and Dick Smith.  Dick is an ole friend I 
met when I lived in Weyers Cave in '80 to '82 and flew with the club  in  Harrisonburg.  
Dick used to fly pattern and then became a pattern judge for many large events. 
We were very happy to have him accept our invite to help with the judging. 
THANKS DICK!
                                   JL

Bill's  Newport on the Static Judging line.  In Sport Scale, the Static score is half of the total 
Score. The model must have been built by the contestant. ARF's not allowed!

Here is Bill Lepley's fleet of WW I models. The Triplane did not fly. Shucks!

Bob Howell from Suffolk flew this beautiful A-1E Skyraider. This is painted like the one 
owned by the Fighter Factory now at the Pungo Airport.   It is propless  due to a noseover 
on his first landing, and he didn't have a replacement prop. Bring a spare next year, Bob!

Beautiful detail in the cockpit!

This is David Haywood from Portsmouth with his great looking SNJ. This is also painted 
in the colors of the Fighter Factory aircraft.  The surface detail was excellent. Lots of
rivets and panel lines. 

Gerrie Taylor came all the way down from Landover, MD to compete with his great looking
Top Flight giant scale P-47.  Garrie said he hasn't competed in any contests in over twenty 
years. The model was powered  by a Moki 2.10 glow and it flew great!  
In the background, Tracie Van Horten is taking some video of the action.  Tracie also 
did a great job of keeping up with the score sheets for each contestant. 

Last of our five contestants was our only club member, Ron Brown, flying his 
large J-3 Cub. This was Ron's first competition of any kind, and he was understandably
 very nervous.  In fact, he almost dropped out prior to his first flight, he was so nervous. 
Ron, we have all been there ourselves! After his first flight, he flew great!  He had some bad
 luck on his second landing (which was very nice, BTW) when a solder joint in the gear bungee 
system let go and he had to drop out. 

David's SNJ right at liftoff!

Flight judges Dick, Dave and Phil scoring a flight by Gerrie Taylor.  Other flight judges were 
John Philbrick, Ed Silvers, and Jerry Winkler. You cannot have a contest of this type without
 judges who are willing to sit and watch every flight closely in order to judge everyone fairly. 
It can be a tedious job if there are a lot of contestants in each round.
 Thanks a lot, guys!  

As usual at our bigger ? contests, we like to have food available. Owen Dwire, Phil Goodwin, 
and Mr. Collins had the grill going and the burgers and hotdogs were ready by 11:30.  Now if 
they could just learn how to put up that darn tent!  Thanks a lot, guys!

We had a very good  turnout of spectators and they were sitting all around the field. 
I think about fifteen were from the HRRC  Club!  Thanks for coming!

CD Joe Lupton got caught by the camera as he compiled the scores. 

Bill Lepley is presented his First Place plaque for his entry in 
Sport Scale.  Well done, Bill!

Bob Howell took home a second place award for his beautiful A-1E Skyraider
 in AMA Fun Scale Division 1.  Division 1 is  restricted to contestants
who are competing in  their first scale contest. 
 Thanks for coming , Bob!

Ron Brown finished First in AMA Fun Scale Division 1. 
Congratulations Ron ! 

  David Haywood is congratulated for his third place finish in 
in AMA Fun Scale Division II.  There was only 0.1 point difference
between second and third place!

Bill Lepley accepts his second place finish in AMA Fun Scale
Division II after edging out David by only  one tenth of a point. 
We didn't have many contestants, but the competition was close!

Garrie Taylor accepting his first place plaque in AMA Fun Scale
Division II.  His P-47 presented very nicely and it was well flown.
Congratulations!

Gotta have a group photo of the winners. Also included is head judge
Dick Smith and CD Joe Lupton.

The contestants and their models. Although these models all flew in the Fun Scale class with
one exception, they all could have flown in Sport Scale if they had proper documentation.
They were all kit built and very well done. No ARF's in this line-up.

Thanks for coming fellows. Our club hopes you all enjoyed yourselves and we look
| forward to having you back  for our seventh scale contest next July!

I would be remiss if I didn't try to remember the rest of our members who helped make
this event a success. Ken Combs provided our PA System once again. Thanks, Ken!
Dennis Hawks kept the flight line moving by alerting the pilots when they were up next and
also handled the flight timing. Well done, Dennis! Peter Dixon's work in seeing to it that our
grass was well groomed for the meet has to be mentioned. I had more comments on how
great the field looked than ever before!

Thanks to all who helped out!

Joe

Photos by: John Philbrick and Joe Lupton