Free Flight: Duration
NFFS NEWS: The month of June looms as a busy one for the National Free Flight Society (NFFS) with a June 1-4 kickoff at the University of Tennessee Minidome (116-ft. ceiling) in Johnson City, TN with their annual U.S. Indoor Championships. There will be 20 official events and a host of unofficial ones as well. Area hotel and dormitory facilities are excellent. Indoor buffs can send a No. 10 SASE to USIC, 1655 Revere Dr., Brookfield, WI 53005 for an informative, three-page contest packet and begin to plan their vacations accordingly.
Free Flight: Duration
NFFS/USOC: For newcomers, that stands for National Free Flight Society/U.S. Outdoor Championships. By the time this column hits the streets sometime in early March, the NFFS will have made an information packet available for the upcoming Week of Free Flight-the USOC. This event will be staged at Lawrenceville, IL during the period June 19-23, 1989. The info packets were scheduled to have been available in mid-January, so if you haven't seen them referenced anywhere else to date, you may acquire yours by sending a No. 10 SASE to NFFS/USOC, 1655 Revere Rd., Brookfield, WI 53005-and tell 'em Duration twisted your arm!
Free Flight: Duration
1989 NATS: I received a last-minute report from Sandy Frank, the Free Flight representative who functions with the Nats Management Committee, who indicates that a stake has been driven to establish the 1989 edition of the week-long, unified AMA Nats. The '89 Nats is to be held in the Tri-Cities area of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland up in the extreme southeastern corner of the State of Washington. The dates are July 15-23, and the following pertinent information with regard to the Free Flight portion should be of interest to prospective attendees. The selected Outdoor Free Flight locale is a gently rolling desert of open space one mile by two miles surrounded by a mile or so of overflight area, all contained by an interstate highway, a mountain, and some scattered housing. It is about 15 minutes from anywhere in the Tri-Cities complex.
1988 Free Flight Nats
THE 1988 AMA NATIONAL Model Airplane Championships will enter the history books, if for no other reason, as the "longest Nats ever." The championships began on July 23rd in the State of Virginia and didn't see the final curtain drawn until mid-October on the plains of southern Illinois. Especially for those Free Flighters who had arranged their vacation time around attendance at the Tidewater Nats in July, the last-minute cancellation of all the Outdoor Free Flight events (except Scale) came as a severe disappointment, at least initially.
Free Flight: Duration
FF NATS OF '88: It has been no secret that the Free Flight community has been dealt a succession of subpar AMA Nats flying sites in recent years. Also, it has been quite a few years since we have seen exclamations of "The best Nats ever!" or the like comments being reported in the various Free Flight columns in the aftermath of this once-distinctive annual contest which bore many former champions of lasting prestige. Unfortunately, it is a fact that the failure or success of any large Free Flight competition can often be measured solely by the facilities offered at the selected site. In general, competition Free Flighters are a hardy lot, and most will sacrifice personal comfort-or travel many miles-to be able to compete on a field of adequate expanse which is relatively free of major obstructions. However, it is difficult to absorb these hardships when it is known beforehand that the selected site for National competition may be more of a challenge than the competition itself.
