Saturday - July 31, 2004

Nats 2004 - RES and Nostalgia class

Photo Gallery

We woke up to rain again, I have never seen it rain so many days in Muncie during a Nats.  I stopped at drug store on the way out to the field; I needed some fresh rubber bands to mount the wing on my twenty something year old WindDrifter I intended on flying in Nostalgia and RES.  When I arrived at the field some people who had been in Muncie all week long were getting tired of waiting on rain and decided to just start their travels home a bit earlier.  But the AMA HQ was saying the weather was going to clear, and they were correct!

By about 10am I could tell we were going to fly, and the weather just kept getting better as the day progressed.  This was going to turn into the best weather day this event day has ever seen.  The winds were light, the thermals were abundant, and everyone who waited to fly was treated to one of those special "gas bag" days.  I specked my WindDrifter out twice today, I hadn't specked my ICON out in the past two days.  The pace was steady and laid back, but when we went to round 4, a place this event has never been before things started slowing down a bit as guys started getting tired.  Yet another day this week where despite the weather looking bad in the morning, we got a whole lot of flying in.

C.D. Tom Kallevang awarded the National Champion trophy in RES to Troy Lawicki, in second place was Brian Smith, and in third place was a very good junior pilot from Michigan, Kevin Steen.

In the Nostalgia event C.D. Mike McGowan awarded the National Champion trophy to Steve Siebenaler, in second place was Tom Scully, and in third place was Ed Wilson.  When Steve won this contest, he also completed his last task to complete his LSF level V.  This brought about massive cheers and celebration, as Steve has been looking for this win for some time.

It is a Nats tradition that a group of us celebrate the end of the week with a special dinner.  Usually this happens at Vincent's at the airport, but this year it was at a Sushi restaurant that JT found earlier in the week.  Steve's level V accomplishment was the spotlight of the evening, and we had enough people to fill two large tables.  They treated us like kings in this place, broke out some special Sake that the chefs mother home brews with ginseng in it, and the Sushi was surprisingly good.

It is always a pleasure to observe the all volunteer crew, veterans and new people alike, work together as a team to produce one of the best soaring contests year after year.  Not enough can be said about volunteers that travel here just to help make this event happen, and work hard all week.  People like Marna and Larry Jefferies, Marna makes the impound run like clockwork, it dictates the flow of a contest, and Larry keeps all the winches and launch equipment running all week, both of these are thankless tasks.  People like Sheldon Smith who works the winch turn arounds and organizes the kids retrieving lines, and he makes sure everyone has fun while doing so.  And to the entire LSF board, who I know have put countless hours into the small details that need to be completed on schedule with an event of this magnitude.  To all the people that give time to pull this week of premiere contesting off, thank you.  The work you do makes this event so special to so many people each year, whether they had the opportunity to attend or not.