Mike Palko's Mustang waiting its turn
By Matthew Neumann
On Wednesday, the contestants were greeted with cloudy skies, light winds and mid to upper 60s for temperatures. The winds, once the official flights started, stayed in one direction. So in the words of Sergeant Shultz from Hogan's Heroes, the day was Be-u-ti-ful! It was such a wonderful day to fly. Only during the last couple of hours did we need sunglasses. The temps held to a reasonable level until then as well.
Today was the second day of qualifying. Again, the contestants have three attempts to do two flights. The high score of today gets to added to the high score of yesterday. These scores are then used to determine who gets to move on and who gets to watch for Thursday's flying.
As mentioned earlier, the Open class was divided into four groups, while the Advanced class was divided into three. The top five from each of the Open groups gets to move on to the top 20 day on Thursday. Yesterday, I mistakenly said the top six pilots in Advanced move on. In reality, it was the top four that move on to Thursday's top 12. The number that moves on is determined by the number of entrants. Lets face it, if you only have 20 entrants and you have a top 20 day, everyone moves on. So why have qualifying when everyone would qualify? The number of fliers moving on is cut down to make it a competition.
Many times in the past, there were a lot of passes on the second flight. The object really is to get in the top five or four, depending upon which skill class you are in. Being first in your circle is really only for bragging rights. That is because on Thursday, everyone's score starts out at zero. It is a brand new contest. So if someone is in for sure and the weather is going south, they probably will just elect to skip the second flight. Why risk your plane for no reason? With the weather deteriorating, the chances of someone improving their score goes down. The only ones that really do fly at that point normally are the ones on the bubble. They are either trying to fend off the guy right below them or trying to catch the guy right above them to make it in. However, since today was such a great day to just fly, there were not as many passes. People flew simply to enjoy a good day of flying. There’s nothing wrong with that! I mean, isn't one of the primary objects of the Nats to have fun flying? So we did.
I am glad to report that we had no mishaps today due to flying. There was a minor “oops” in the computer program that we use. So, the tabulators wound up having to add the two top scores by hand, or should I say calculator. Fortunately, they were up to the task.
With the qualifiers determined, the flight order will be randomly generated by the computer and posted. Tomorrow starts a new day, and effectively, a new contest. Tomorrow, we fly two flights. One in front of one set of judges and the other before another set. The two scores are then added together to determine the top five in Open, which move on to Friday's flying. In Advanced, we will determine the Advanced National Champion. Tomorrow is probably the roughest day of the competition. You have no throw away flights. Yesterday and today, we took the best of two flights. If for some reason, you just had a bad flight or other issues, you had a chance to make it up with the second flight. Not so tomorrow. You need to bring your A-Game to both flights if you want to succeed.
I am also starting to note the number of family members that tagged along. There are numerous wives who came with their husbands for support. They also help behind the scenes in many ways. There are two brothers, Steve and Doug Moon who have their sons with them, Jake and Max. We even have a couple of pets along. And yes, they get a lot attention and love to get spoiled. This is just not a single person in the family showing up. We have entire families as well. We then combine to form one large extended family.
Doing some preflight prep.
