Control Line: World Championships
The US team and most of its supporters left San Francisco on Saturday, October 15 and arrived in Shanghai late Sunday evening after a long, tiring 13 1/2-hour flight on an Air China 747. We were met at the Shanghai airport by Mr. Huang of the Aero Sports Federation of China, the host organization for the Control Line World Championships. Mr. Huang had arranged with the local authorities to get us quickly through customs and into waiting buses to carry us to our hotel. Imagine a normal-size bus being skillfully driven down a street closely likened to an alley in most US cities. Even at 1 a.m., the streets were occupied by people, bicycles, and construction crews. There were very few street lights, and virtually no traffic-control devices (and those were generally ignored). Other vehicles, most without headlights turned on, all seemed to aim at the same small piece of the narrow road now occupied by our bus. For this group of tired-but-excited Americans the ride to the hotel was wild, yet we arrived safely and without incident.
U.S. Fliers Win at '92 Control Line World Championships
HRADEC KRÁLOVÉ, Czechoslovakia, was the site of the 1992 Control Line World Championships, held July 20-26, 1992. Two major items stand out. First: Spell it P-A-U-L, as in Walker-1992 was Paul's year, and he is the World Champion for F2B Aerobatics. It wasn't even close-Paul totally blew away the competition. After the problems of losing his model (temporarily) in New York's Kennedy airport in 1986, the bad mix of fuel in Kiev in 1988, and the total collapse of judging sanity in France in 1990, 1992 just had to be Paul's year. And it was! A big "Congratulations! Well done!" goes to Paul.
Control Line: Racing
WRITE A COLUMN for a magazine? Who, me? Sure, you never know what's going to happen if you don't try. But I've never done anything like that before! Who cares? You've got some ideas and you don't seem to be afraid of mouthing about them, no matter who's listening. That was just about the gist of a conversation I had recently with Carl Wheeley of AMA. It seems we've a new publication here and some special interest columns are in order. Carl and I had a long conversation at last year's Nats awards banquet and he remembered!
Control Line: Racing
RAT RACE is dying, and we're going to have to do something about it before it's too late. The past few years have seen a steady decline in Rat Race participation in virtually all parts of the country until, in many local meets, it just isn't flown any more. Why? Too fast? Too complex? Too expensive? Unsafe? Yes, probably all of these reasons and more. Let's look at each of these areas a little closer. Too fast: Read part of the letter I got from Bill Pardue, Vice Chairman of the CLCB. "With couplers out, Rat Race winning top-end speeds still appear to be in the 150-160 mph range. A lot of whipping goes on by the real strong pro flyers. It has become part of the game. And it makes it rough on newcomers. "Did some clocking of one of the best in traffic and the seven laps right after passing were a full second faster than the seven laps as he approached. He was consistent at this. It was a 1,400 lap race and his sub-pilot (with less experience) ran a consistent speed, but it was the same speed as the other pilot had when he was approaching to pass.
CL Team Race FAI Team Finals
AUGUST 2ND AND 3RD were the dates, the place was Lake Charles, La. The event was the selection of the team which will represent the United States at the World Championships next year in FAI Team Race. The story of this team selection started out to be one of the infamous Louisiana rain storms which were so obvious (at least in some magazines if not in fact) from last year's Nats. But this Nats turned out to be one of acceptable, if not just plain nice, weather and some great competition. And the competition was indeed great. Two facets of the qualifying stand out. One was the good speed and one-stop races of the Jolly/Kusik team, the other was the machine-like consistency of the Plaunt/Plaunt team.
