Doug Beardsworth shows off his new Frank Hawks Gamma(above) after judging. Contest director, Dave Mitchell (at right), and the Non-Nats brass used modern tools to run an efficient, yet laid back meet.
ing Aces Club is not just for boys any more. Young Maria Kondrat flew her Freshman Embryo Endurance model along with the best in the class and managed an enviable 8th place. Another young aviatrix, Erika Escalante lined up shoulder-to-shoulder and competed with her “Red Tail” Mustang in the WWII Mass Launch event and Simpli- fied Scale as well.
Of course, the boys made a good showing for themselves at the Non-Nats too. Among them, Generation “Y” flyer, Phil McGovern, was a strong competitor in the Dime Scale and WWII Mass Launch events and Gen “Z” flyer, Benedict Dion, showed off the unique biplane Embryo Endurance model he built from his own plans—an Earl Stahl for the next generation, perhaps? Other young veterans of previous Gene-
seo FAC meets, such as Kendrick Gosselin and Connor Azure, were seen on the field flying models or helping others. A tip of the hat goes out to the parents and grandpar- ents of these lucky youngsters. These folks
spend the time and make the effort to be there with their kids. One dad flew his Guillow’s 30-inch F4U Corsair for me and told a story of how he had hung it 30 years ago in a pediatric playroom at Boston’s famous Dana Farber Cancer In- stitute. He had recently rebuilt it to fly for the FAC. Certainly, few models have made such an impact on so many young people as that Corsair.
Contest day two
Friday dawned with the promise of more hot and humid weather and escalating winds into the afternoon. Flyers were seen checking their smartphones periodically for the latest news on a storm front scheduled to sweep through the central New York region later that day. Again, the mass launches were moved into the morning with the Thompson Trophy event run around 9:30 a.m. and the WWI Mass Launch around noon. By the time the third and final flights were flown in the Thompson, the wind had picked
up and was bouncing the big radial engined models around the sky. Chris Starleaf’s Hughes H-1 edged out Charlie Sauter’s Mar- coux-Bromberg and Matt King’s Mr. Mulli- gan for the top spot. World War I saw a se- ries of high and long flights with several models falling just short of the cornfield at the edge of the airfield. Fortunately, no mod- els were lost. Dick Gorman’s colorful red and white S.E.5a flew strong in the early rounds, but faltered in the final which was won by Tom Hallman and his Fokker
D.VII. Two non-scale events were flown on Fri- day, OT Rubber Fuselage and OT Gas Repli- ca. OT Gas Replica is a unique event with three flights flown against pre-announced target times. The winner of this event is the contestant with the least difference in sec- onds between the target and actual flight times. Ted Allebone took first place flying his CAVU with only a 17-second difference across his three official flights.
As the afternoon wore on, the wind got quite strong and it seemed only the Catapult
A classic Embryo Endurance model on the winding stooge (at left). This one was built by Paul Stott. A couple of FAC’ers (above) showing some easy style!
FLYING MODELS 37
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