Contest 2020
Sunday, October 11
The 14th Annual MCRCS Bomb/Parachute Drop Contest
took place on October 11th and it was held at the same time as the
delayed opening day Building Contest.
This turned out not to be an issue to have both events at the same time
since there were only 4 planes entered in the building contest. Weather turned out to be okay with somewhat cloudy
gray skies with light winds and temperatures in the low 70’s. We lucked out with the weather as drenching
rains left over from Hurricane Delta were forecasted to move in later in the
day. Anyhow, a good turnout of both
pilots and club spectators were on hand as well as other non-participating
flyers. We had 8 entrants in the Bomb Drop and 5
entrants in the Parachute Drop contests.
Bomb Drop
–
Only two pilots got their bombs to fall inside the white 30
ft diameter circle. Bob Tharp (Fun Cub)
took first place by hitting inside the second ring and got a total of 6
points. Haakon Aurdal took second place (Electro
Stick) hitting just inside the outer white ring and ended up with a total of 5
points. It should be noted that we also
had a 120 ft diameter red circle used for the target that was left over from a
previous U-Control event. Hitting inside
this red circle gave 2 points and hitting outside only 1 point. This helped to make the scoring easier. Carl Gubkin (Tundra), John Zangrando (S.
Kadet) and Nobu Iwasawa (Votek) all had 4 points giving them a tie for 3rd
place. Joe Ramando (Flengling) andGeorge Miller (Aerostar) had 3 points and Irwin Keshner
(Tiger 2) had just 2 points. One other
note is that George crashed on his first flight but all was okay for making
later flights. I believe he crashed last
year as well on take-off when he realized his transmitter was not set
correctly. This year’s problem may have
been for a similar reason.
Parachute
Drop –
No drops hit the target but four of the five contestants got
inside the 120 ft diameter red circle.
John Zangrando (S. Kadet) got 2 of his drops within the red circle and
took first place with 4 points. Nobu Iwasawa (Votek), Bob Tharp (Fun Cub) and Carl Gubkin
(Tundra) all tied with 3 points. Not
sure who was closest when no one hits the main 30 foot diameter target. Carl, who usually does well with this event,
also had some issues with his transmitter when he accidently hit the wrong
switch when switching from his Building Contest Plane to his Drop Plane. This took a while to figure out why his
elevator was moving instead of his throttle.
He also forgot to remove the rubber band holding the wrapped chute
together on his first drop which also held a go-pro type camera. I’ll admit that he was over-whelmed with the
two contests!
