Spring Time Opening Pattern (STOP) Contest
Gary Weaver’s Field, Othello, WA
Written by Gordon Anderson, Event CD and NSRCA District 8 Vice President
The District 8 contest season has begun with the Spring Time Opening
Pattern (STOP) contest. This event was held at Gary Weaver’s private
model airplane field in Othello, Washington over the Memorial Day
weekend. We had a total of 10 pilots register for the event,
7 Masters, 2 Intermediate, and 1 Sportsman. Ray Gauthier,
our new Sportsman pilot, had engine problems and was unable to
fly. Ray spent the weekend judging and supporting the event,
thanks Ray!
STOP contest competitors
Judging this event was a challenge! John Folgelson dropped by on
Saturday in time to judge a Masters round, this was a big help. In
order to keep from burning out the judges we tried a new idea and had
the Masters guys judge themselves on rounds 3 and 4. This seemed
to work pretty well and we now have an established procedure in the very
likely event we are short judges in the future. You can read the
details of this self judging procedure on the D8 web site. There
is a document describing the details in the documents section of our web
site, www.tcrcm.org/dist8.
Grant Sharp catching a few winks
between rounds!
The weather was pretty good this year. We had
a little wind not too bad but it was HOT! It was in the 90’s both
Saturday and Sunday. We were able to complete 4 rounds on Saturday
and 2 on Sunday. The contest was wrapped-up a little after noon on
Sunday.
Intermediate saw a pretty close race between Grant
Sharp and Bill Carder. These guys battled all day Saturday each
winning two rounds. Unfortunately both Grant and Bill had pretty
rough landings on the 4th round. This put both aircraft
out of commission for the rest of the contest. After 4 rounds Bill
won by 32 points. Grant is one of D8’s new Pattern pilots and
will host a contest at his field in Molalla in late June.
Gary McClellan working on his
Angel, YS engine trouble!
Brett Bowen dominated masters! He won the first four rounds on
Saturday and decided to fly two rounds of FAI on Sunday to get some
practice and prepare for the next contest in Auburn. Dennis and
Lyle were in a close race for 2nd place all weekend. In
the end Dennis took 2nd place by only .01 points! This
is the closest I have ever seen a contest.
Gordon Anderson giving Rex Lesher
a little preflight advice.
The full standings are shown below. We had
great turnout from our pattern friends in Oregon, thanks guys!
