The 1995 National Aeromodeling Championships
With the 1995 National Aeromodeling Championships completed and in the record books, the Academy of Model Aeronautics closes one chapter of Nationals history and looks forward to a new one. AMA will celebrate two significant events in 1996: the Academy's 60th anniversary, and the first Nationals at the National Flying Site at Muncie, Indiana. The Academy hosted 1995 Nationals events at Tri-Cities, Washington; Lawrenceville, Illinois; and at the National Flying Site at Muncie. While the three-site Nationals was successful, it was not AMA's original intention. The entire Nationals was originally scheduled for Tri-Cities, the site of the 1989 event.
Mid-America Challenge
The 1995 Mid-America Challenge was held August 16-20 at Muncie's National Flying Site. Pilots from as far away as California competed for top honors in three classes of air racing: Formula I, Thompson Trophy, and AT-6. First place in each class earned a $1,000 cash prize. Pilots competed on the site's newly completed Stage Center runways. Each race consisted of six laps around a two-pylon left-hand-pattern course. Ed Rankin took first place in the Formula I event; Roger Cirelli and Bill Bloss rounded out the top-three positions.
NewComers
SURPRISE! SURPRISE! All you're going to get this month from your regular NewComers author is a brief introduction to Matthew Usher's expanded coverage. Matt is an editor for Model Aviation. The events detailed this month consumed a prodigious amount of my time over many months, culminating in a mind-numbing, hectic flurry of activity on Tuesday, March 12! As a result, since I was sitting squarely in the middle of the forest, it seemed far more prudent to let someone else describe the trees. The short of it was that, working in conjunction with the Indiana Academy at Ball State University, AMA beamed almost four hours of live interactive TV programming to 32,000 students, grades 4 through 7, in five states.
Turbine America
The flying site is ideal for jets, with 72 × 700-foot crossed runways and a large paved ramp for startup. Planned site improvements include gravel parking areas adjacent to the taxiway/road access. This will alleviate the only major logistical difficulty for future events. The flying site provides a large, clear overflight area. The only visible obstruction is an empty farmhouse and silo about 1/2 mile off one end of the runway. Wouldn't you know that someone would hit the silo sooner or later? The unfortunate victim Lewis Patton's airplane. Lewis hit the silo with a beautiful Heinkel scale model while he was fighting what may have been radio problems. Fortunately the remains were reported to be repairable. It just goes to show that the gremlins can bite even the best of us. Fortunately there were only two other "fatalities" over the weekend.
A Celebration of Eagles
A once-in-a-life-time gathering of many great names in aeromodeling. Muncie, 6 July: It's eight p.m. - cocktail hour all across the Midwest - and I'm standing directly under Carl Goldberg's 1937 Valkyrie, gazing out over a sea of people, sloshing about under a low sky of model aircraft. This is Frank V. Ehling Museum at AMA Headquarters - eight thousand square feet jammed to the rafters with the history of our sport. And the people? Oh, lucky day! These are the men who were the boys who created that sport.
