I985 NATS: FF Outdoor Scale
FOUR DAYS OF SUNNY, warm weather had gone by. It was Wednesday morning, and outdoor Scale competition was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. No sunshine greeted the early-rising Scale fliers as they headed toward the outdoor site, located on one of Westover's long asphalt runways about a half mile from the AMA Headquarters building. The weather forecast called for rain, but not until late afternoon. A slight breeze drifted diagonally across the runway. Many contestants were already on hand and making test flights by 7 o'clock. Wary of the weather, contest officials decided that official flights would begin half an hour earlier than planned, at 7:30. It was a fateful decision, although no one realized it at the time.
I985 NATS: FF Indoor Scale
IT WAS 2 P.M. ON SUNDAY, July 28. Inside the Base Hangar at Westover AFB, site of Indoor Peanut and AMA Rubber Scale events, the temperature had risen into the high 80s. The last two or three Easy B, Manhattan Cabin, and Pennyplane flights were floating in ever-lowering circles over the huge white-painted 200 × 250-ft. concrete floor as the first Indoor Scale models took to the air on their out-of-the-box trimming flights. Several hundred spectators watched from the balconies and borders of the floor. AMA Scale had 28 contestants ready to go; 27 fliers toed the line in Peanut. It would be a long, hot afternoon and early evening for them all. What the field may have lacked in quantity, it certainly made up for in quality. There were some serious Rubber Scale fliers on hand: the Eggerts (father and son), Jack McGillivray, Ken Groves, Dave Rees, David Aronstein, Jim Miller, and Don Srull, to name a few.
U.S. Indoor Championships
IT WAS 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 17. Scattered across the vast 260 by 360-ft. concrete floor of the convention center, the nine Hand-Launched Glider contestants-busily hurling their sheet balsa creations into the still air-seemed dwarfed by the great room with its arching, 72-ft. ceiling. For the second year in a row, the glider fliers were leading off the U.S. Indoor Championships at Niagara Falls, NY. As in past years, the Class AAAA USIC was co-sponsored by the National Free Flight Society and the National Indoor Model Airplane Society. Once again genial Tony Italiano of Brookfield, WI was at the
