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Last week biggest F3A competition in USA was held at Muncie, Indiana (AMA airfields). This year is special because USA team was selected for 2007 world championship in Argentina. Looks like now its time for new generation pilots to show top flying. This year USA team members are: Jason Schulman, Andrew Jesky and Quique Somenzini.

My good friend top F3A pilot David Lockhart, send great detailed report on each day what's going on in this year USA championship, here i share it with you:

Dad and I finally have the Van loaded and leave New Jersey for the 2007 Nationals at 6pm (I was a little slow finishing last minute inspections on planes and packing backup equipment). Van is loaded with my 2 electric Prestiges and Dad's OS140 Vivat, and of course 2 foamies for fun! Joe Zeigenfus (Advanced class) follows in his Van with his electric Abbra (my old plane) and his OS140 Focus II.

Driving for ~300 miles with one stop for dinner, we stay at a hotel in western Pennsylvania for the night. Several other friends - Joe Lachowski (Masters, OS140 Astral XX), Rick Wallace (Masters, OS140 Brio), and Anthony Romano (Masters, OS140 Black Magic V2) are also at the hotel.

After breakfast, it is another 75 miles to eastern Ohio for a day of practice with more friends -
Mike Hester - Masters, YS160 Black Magic V3 prototype (Mike is designer of Black Magic series) Arch Stafford - Masters, YS170 Black Magic V3 (#2 prototype) Dean Funk - Intermediate, YS140 Black Magic V2

Beautiful day of flying, light winds, and ~80-85F. Maybe 50 flights completed. All equipment is working perfectly. Several of us get to fly the Black Magic V3 prototype - it is a very good plane, very constant speed. Always nice to see more good designs.

8pm we are on the road again (now 4 Vans), and after 1 stop for dinner, and another 300 miles, we arrive at the hotel in Muncie, Indiana at 130 AM. Very tired, and off to bed.

8AM is far too soon, but it is raining, so back to sleep until 9AM, and then off to breakfast and shopping for local supplies. Contest site is at the AMA headquarters which has 3 very nice flying sites approximately 1/3 mile apart from each other. Sites are pretty crowded with practice flying, and rain is intermittent through the day. Still, Dad has two flights, and I have 1 flight on each Prestige. My plan is to use the A60 Prestige for PO7, and the Neu Prestige for FO7.

At 500 PM, the pilots meeting begins and goes well. We see all contestants - contest is large -

F3A is also US Team Trials for 2007 World Team - so format will be 4 rounds PO7, top 20 fly 2
rounds of FO7, and then top 8 fly 2 FO7 and 2 unknown. All the best US flyers are flying -

And also Canadian F3A Team Members Chad Northeast (Plettenberg Twister) and Dezso Vaghy (Plettenberg Prestige).

Masters will also be very competitive class with several former winners and many practicing very hard with some very good planes.

So.....almost midnight now, and time for bed. Schedule for rest of week will be up at 630 AM, breakfast at 645, check in for Dad at flying site at 730, and flying for Masters starting at 800 AM. 1200 to 100 PM will be lunch break, and then F3A flying from 100 to 500 PM. 500 PM to 900 PM will be time to practice.

Weather prediction for the week is unusual for Muncie, and not the best. 90F, 50% chance rain, and 10-15 mph wind for Wednesday. 80F for rest of contest. 50% chance of rain on Thursday. No rain expected for Friday and Saturday.

...ugh.....630 AM alarm was way too early this morning......and dark skies and rain. Went to breakfast and to the site for check-in as planned......rain stopped around 930 and flying started - Sites 1 and 3 (Site 2 is for control line events) with 2 flightlines each for Masters, and Site 4 with 2 flightlines for Intermediate. Afternoon session of flying started around 200 PM with 4 flightlines of F3A at Sites 1 and 3, and 2 flightlines of Advanced on Site 4. Light to moderate blow out wind most of the day. Temperature in morning was cool, <80F, and warmer in afternoon, maybe 90F. For F3A and Masters, large numbers of pilots make it difficult to have equal exposure for pilot groups and judging groups, so it is hard to know how different groups compare until later in the week.

For the morning flying for Masters at Site 3, Dad made 2 good flights, not his best, but a good start and is middle of pack. Anthony and Rick also made ok flights and are in the middle of the pack. On Site 1, Ken Velez made 2 good flights with his electric Prestige, but did not score as well as he wanted, and is 12th place (top 8 go to finals). Ken is likely to fly his OS140 Vivat on Thursday. Steve Miller made 2 good flights and is in 6th place. Joe Lachowski is flying his OS140 Astral XX and is in 15th place. George Asteris returned to the NATs after about 5 years away from pattern (former F3A finalist) and is flying well in 5th place. Both rounds at Site 3 were won by Glenn Watson (Texas) who has made Masters finals many times. Arch Stafford won both rounds at Site 1, and is probably the favorite as he was leading Masters in 2006 until he had mechanical failures.

For the afternoon, I flew at Site 3 with Don Szczur, Chip Hyde, Andrew Jesky, Pete Collinson, Todd Blose, and others. I made 2 good flights with A60 Prestige, first flight ~165-170 meters, and moved into 160 meters for 2nd flight. Andrew is flying well, and his 2nd flight was very good. Chip is flying his old Scandalous bipe (and flying pretty good for early in the contest), as his new plane crashed from structural failure 2 weeks ago after some efforts to reduce weight to below 5kg. Don is also flying well with his 2006 Brio (and he really likes the CPLR type canalizer on the plane). Pete is flying well, but puffed a set of TP5300s on the 6-sided loop. Another flyer also puffed a pack of TP5000s (I have no idea how he managed that....I have flown the 5000s very hard in practice and cannot get temps above 125F). My raw scores for total of 3 judges were 1773 and 1803, and this normalized to 986 (closer in flight) and 935 (Andrew had 188 3 raw on his best round....wow...). I will stick with closer flights for Thursday. Flying on Site 3 was done quickly, so I went to Site 1 to watch other flyers. Jason "flamed out" with his OS200 Integral on the first round....apparently the thrust washer slips on the spinner backplate and the motor quits (apparently this has happened several times before). So Jason flew his electric Integral for round 2 - flying quite big and fast for electric. Quique was flying the #2 Euphoria bipe with YS170 - and very custom 15.5-12 APC 4 blade - it is reshaped to 13 pitch, wider, and much stiffer with composite cloth (much time spent by Wayne Ulery). I talked with Wayne for maybe 30 minutes - incredible guy (as always) and a joy to talk to about model planes. I was able to see QQs 2nd flight - very big - maybe 160 meters, and close to top of box on every maneuver. The Euphoria is not a slow plane.

2 more rounds of F3A on Thursday, and then top 20 fly on Friday FO7 2x. Sorry, not much news about Site 4....too busy to visit.

After competition, I made 2 good practice flights for FO7 and unknowns with Neu Prestige. Rick and Anthony also got some practice, and unfortunately Anthony's landing gear plate came loose (again).......he is using some very stiff CF gear which is transferring too much shock to the plane......so it is now 1205AM....and Anthony is just finishing installation of some lighter and thinner CF gear from Rick with tools from me. Dinner tonight was after practice at Site 4 where campers and tents are allowed. All flyers from northeast US got together at campsite of Bruce and Lori Ginn (from Maryland, Bruce flies Intermediate) who prepared a great spread of food - fried chicken, shredded beef sandwiches, 7 layer dip, salads, desert, and beverages.

Too busy for much tonight........broke a rudder cable tonight in practice, and just finished fixing. Should be good for semifinals on Friday. Link below for results after 4 PO7 for F3A....top 20 will fly 2 rounds of FO7 on Friday.

Flying was interupted in the morning today by rain. I was judging in the morning at Site 3, and saw midair between Lamar Blair and Vicente Bortone. Lamar lost 1 stab half from his Aggressor, and Vicente had some damage to the outboard aileron/ wingtip of his Abbra. Both landed without further incident. Quite a bit of wet shoes, wingbags, and chairs will need to dry out tomorrow.

All of the group from the northeast US is still doing well - equipment is working good. Steve Miller and Ken Velez are in the running to make the Masters finals, and others have a chance to move up with some good flights. Weather has remained quite cool for Muncie, and tomorrow is supposed to be 10-20 mph winds and only 75F (sometimes 75F is the low temperature at night). With the high winds and cool weather, I have been flying the Neu motor Prestige with the TP5300s. In practice this evening, I tried a new prop (18x13PN) for more speed, and it works very well (a little faster than the already fast 18x12.5PN). Making the FAI finals will be very tough - all of the top 20 semifinalists are flying well, and I would say easily 60% probably fly the FO7 better than the PO7. The top 3 finishers will be the US Team for 2007.......no doubt it will be a very strong Team.

NEW! Report 4:

Hi Everyone, Just talked with David. Weather is a bit better, don't know what to expect tomorrow. Saying that, yes, Dave made the F3A finals, #7 out of the 8 qualifiers. He sayss the competition is really high quality and most of the big names are ahead of him. Steve Miller made the finals for Masters. As of right now, Dave and Ron really haven't had much time to check scores, but Anthony probably (out of the three Masters guys from "here") had the highest score, then Ron and then Rick. But that could be totally wrong. Best part of all is that all of the District 2 (I think that's our number) guys had no mechanical problems as far as Dave knows. All planes will be coming home in "one piece," at least as of now. Hope it remains so for the rest of the weekend.

Special thanks for report to Dave mom Karen.

FAI class standing affter finals.

FAI class standings affter 4 P07 rounds.

1 Unknown sequence.

Planes and equipment in F3A class:

1- Integral, OS-200/Electric, Futaba
2- Euphoria, YS-170, JR
3- Integral, Hacker, Futaba
4- Astral XX Plus, YS-170, Futaba
5- Scandalous, Hacker, Futaba
6- Beryll, Hacker, Futaba
7- Brio, YS-170, JR
8- Prestige, Nue, JR

NEW Very nice article about father and son teams at Nats, Dave and his dad also there!

Dont forget Mr. Fred Midgett from http://higherplaneproductions.com/ working on in this contest, so we can expect some cool videos and maybe DVD in near future!

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