May 2003 Mile Hi Combat Report, May 3, 2003

Combat day at Mile Hi must mean wind. It seems that the wind always blows when we want to fly combat! Oh well, at least it was warm, the snow and rain were not trying to come down, and the wind was down the long runway. We must find things to be thankful for.

Five combat pilots showed up to do battle with each other and the winds. John Jaugilas, George Kerr, Brian Neff, Tom Neff, and Larry Ott launched planes into the battle for air supremacy

There were only a few cuts today. We were all pretty rusty I think after being blown/rained out on the last two local combat meets. We also had a couple of midairs, which are not very common for us. Larry Ott noticed at the end of the day that one third of the wing on one side had only about ¼" high spar on his SPAD Derelict. Did not seem to affect flight characteristics as he flew well all day. In the last round Tom Neff and I had a bone crushing midair. I am not sure what Tom’s plane did, but mine did at least three horizontal flat spins before gliding in to a soft landing with only one aileron. The midair killed the engine, but did not break the prop. Tom tried desperately to regain control of his plane, but the damage was too great and it went down. Hope the damage is easily repairable, Tom. I wish I had this on videotape. Seeing my Dodger get flung into those spin moves was pretty spectacular.

JJ was only able to fly two rounds today as this transmitter started to come apart. I hope it is not anything serious.

There were only two scale planes, so after everyone was done with Open, Adam Bryant and I flew the scale planes around for some practice. Good thing it was practice, as something always kept us from chasing a streamer. Thanks Adam for a fun time.

Scores for the day ended up:

Larry Ott 740

George Kerr 620

Tom Neff 500

Brain Neff 420

John Jaugilas 164

Brian Neff still leads in Mile Hi Top Gun points with 2280 followed by JJ with 1844. See the rest of the scores at: http://www.milehirc.com/combat/top_gun_2003.htm.

Brian also leads in the COCOA scoring with a total of 1240 and followed closely by Tom Neff with 1020. View all of the COCOA scores at: http://www.milehirc.com/cocoa/2003_cocoa_top_gun_scores.htm

All in all we had another fun and safe day of combat at Mile Hi.

I want to thank all of the volunteers that came out and helped with line marshalling and judging. Thanks guys. We could not have done it without you.

George Kerr

Last changed: 02/08/2004

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