Mike Johnson: Well we're off to a great start.  We had 6 pilots for hand launch today including Chris, Wayne, Robert, Don Cleveland, and Adam Quennoz (and myself).  We had plenty of wind all day - even a few raindrops for a few moments but we still successfully completed 8 rounds and had only a few minor injuries to the planes.  

Final results:

Chris - 7000

Mike - 6578

Robert - 6418

Adam - 6206

Don - 5758

Wayne - 2948 

See you all tomorrow.

Mike J

Unlimited Class Results Summary

Unlimited Class Results with Final Standings and Round-By-Round Scores in .pdf format

Saturday - 4 rounds - 12 minutes all rounds

Sunday - 5 rounds - 8, 10, 10, 12, 12 minute rounds

    Photo Gallery from the 2010 Gateway Open

Tony Estep: It would be hard to design a better contest day than today. Mostly sun with occasional clouds, light and variable winds, and intermittent puffs of lift that often frustrated the pilots and spread the field.

I don't have the scoresheets, but there were about thirty entrants today, fewer than attended the Saturday event. Since I wasn't there on Saturday I can't tell that story, but all reports indicate that it was long, grueling, and wild and wooly at the end.

CD Mark Nankivil called for five rounds: one of 8 minutes, two of 10 minutes, and two of 12 minutes. The first group stepped to the winches, and off we went, launching west in a light crosswind blowing toward the south.

After the dust had settled from the round, the scores were tightly packed at the top, as about half the field had made the time, and only a few landing points separated the top dozen flyers.

After that, every competitor found himself in one of two situations: The top guys fought to avoid the slightest error, since so many were breathing down their necks; and the guys below battled to achieve high round scores hoping to advance at the expense of those above who slipped up on time or landing.

Some flight groups launched into big lift and saw all members make easy maxes, but there were several that found spotty conditions and saw one or several competitors drop a chunk of points. Even some of the star pilots suffered a missed time at some point or other.

The most dramatic example came in round 4. All the pilots in the final group launched into sink and came down fast. But after a couple of minutes a low-level hand-launch thermal appeared, and those who weren't too low were able to catch it and climb out. Two unfortunate pilots couldn't avoid a disastrous burial, and plummeted down by two groups. Jeff Pfeifer, who had been leading with a near-perfect score up to that point, was helpless in the ugly sink that hammered him down, and Mike Johnson suffered a similar fate.

A few highlights and lowlights come to mind. One highlight was the incredible low save engineered by Robert, who circled his Aspire at an altitude of no more than thirty feet, heading downwind for all or nothing. He got it all with a good climb-out and a beautiful max. Another highlight was the battle of the oldsters that Robert and I staged in round 5, as we buried the others in our group and circled downwind through several lead changes, as first one and then the other seemed to be on top.

A lowlight was the high-altitude battle of the Icons. In the final round, Karl Miller and I had a midair at about 1000 feet of altitude. Each plane suffered a gash in the leading edge, and I ended up with a piece of Karl's wing skin sticking straight up from my tip panel. Both of us made the 12-minute time, but when I lowered my flaps in the landing pattern, the chunk of foreign matter on my wing suddenly jumped up into the airstream and became an airbrake, leading to a miserable zero landing and spoiling the one chance I'll ever have in my life to finish ahead of Karl, who had started the round a few points behind me [Ed. note: much to Tony’s surprise when he saw the final standings, despite the landing, he did indeed manage to stay ahead of Karl.  Way to go Tony!]

Pat McCleave had an unfortunate tangle with a winch that jumped into his landing pattern, resulting in another gashed leading edge. Aside from those not-too-serious dings, I don't recall any other damage.

Jim Frickey was flying as well as always and his leg seems to be bothering him less this year. Jim has lost 108 lbs., a really terrific achievement.

It was good to see Marc Gellart and Alden Shipp, as well as all the other out-of-town visitors who drove from far away to compete in our excellent contest.

Keith Vinyard provided the air-conditioned scoring RV and flew his Topaz, and the RV's heat also seemed to provide the thermal generator that ultimately decided the contest.

MVSA had another good showing, with excellent scores from Glauco and Brendan -- and of course the winner Chris, who swept the field with wins on Saturday and Sunday. What a guy!

Brendan Miller: Hey guys guess I will take a stab at this flying report stuff.

Day one started with humid hot weather with a 30% chance of storms. When I arrived at the field there were quite a few people already there, having left before my father we had to wait a little bit for him to arrive, HWY K can be tricky with all those stop lights. I met people I don't get to see much and set up next to Johnny Berlin. Soon my dad arrived and we set up all the equipment, aside from a few hiccups getting stuff together we had it up and running. The pilots meeting was called and the CD told us what was going on he called for 12 minute rounds all day, needless to say there was 12 minute air, if you could find it. The day was going smoothly till a pop-up storm came out of no where and had people scrambling to get stuff undercover, I have to admit two piece wings are pretty nice. The storm rolled in and I helped Glauco fight to get the winches batteries and chargers covered, I went for cover in the van when I noticed Bob Berson having to hold two planes and a canopy by himself so I ran out and helped him hold down the fort. A lot of people helped others keep there stuff from flying a way my dad was trying to get a canopy cover back in line when it dawned on him that he was holding a metal poll in a thunder storm. The storm went on with heavy rain and high wind gusts, in the end 3-4 canopies were toast, and a lot of electronics were wet. Soon after the storm passed we went back to flying, the first couple of groups had light wind and lift, but soon another front came through a few minutes after the last flight group launched. Most were caught off guard and found themselves out of bounds a few had to walk pretty far to get their planes. Unfortunately there was one lost plane from all the wind, we will keep looking for it and hopefully it shows up.There was another flight group that went under a cloud and a few people grayed out on glider was sucked up into the cloud and was also lost. After that the contest was ended and the packing up began.

Taking shelter from the fast-moving thunderstorm cell after Round 3 on Saturday.

Day 2 came and the weather looked better as far as storms nothing close to the sod farm. When I arrived people were just starting to show up, soon the equipment arrived and we were back at it again. At the pilots meeting the rules were the same on what was out and what was in. The CD called for 5 rounds 8, 10, 10, 12, 12 the air was different on Sunday more lift less wind. I had one goal all day and that was to get my time and get landing points which I was able to do except for the last round where I was in reflex the entire time. I was also trying to push the Espada on the launches which I was doing, on person quoted "I never seen Espada wings bend like that."Guess I am doing my job then. I was also happy with my flying making it to 9th, now I just need to learn how to land the Espada and I will be on track. I will note that today was the day of low saves there were lots of them most notable was Robert going from landing approach height to skying out and getting his time, it was impressive. Another one was a supra that was really low and made it out. At the end of the day when the dust settled Chris lee came out on top and took home 1st place Saturday and Sunday and overall for the weekend. I have to say I like the bigger contests I tend to learn a lot from them and makes me want to become a great pilot and ride up there with the big boys.

Brendan

Adam Quennoz: Congratulations to Chris Lee. Fantastic flying! I felt so bad for Jeff Pfeifer.  He was firing on all cylinders. He was nailing lands like a machine. The 3rd round he fell in to a sink hole and couldn't find his way out. The rest is history.

Big kudos to Mark and Brendan for the hard work keeping the equipment going. I'm president of the Bolivar club. I wish I could get that kind effort from the membership that the MVSA puts forth. Everyone pitched and got the winches laid out in no time. What a great club!!

I think that's all.

Adam Q

Tony Estep: Our members had impressive results in the Gateway Open! We had 4 guys in the top 10 on Saturday, and 4 guys again in the top 10 on Sunday. No wonder our club contests are so tough. Particular congratulations to Art, who took advantage of the slight misfortune of some of the top group to vault over them into 3rd on Saturday! 

Awesome job with the equipment by Mark and Brendan, and kudos to Ed for his diligent and patient scorekeeping, a job that I know only too well. Rich handled the many details, Bob Keeler was a stalwart contributor as always, and the free ice water saved lives or at least heat prostration. Another really well-produced contest and a feather in the cap for our club. 

Mark Miller: First.....The less said about my flying this weekend the better. I popped off 8 out of 10 flights and scratched for every point to end up right around the bottom. I think I know where the issue is and I'll fix it. I am happy that in one flight I popped off and got an 8 minute flight. I had a plan when I launched and instead of taking my time going where I wanted I had to just get there and the lift was right where I predicted. I worked it up to a good height only to get caught in the following sink with no relief to be found. It is at least nice to see your planning actually work.

Second....I am very proud of Brendan's performance. He flew great especially on Sunday and had great flights. I timed for him in all but one flight and there is no greater thrill for a father than to have your son and his father work so well together. Being a timer is not only about keeping time and watching where the others are and where the lift might be. It is also part mentor, psychologist, emotional support and change management specialist. It is something special when two people can work so well together. He got all 1000+ point rounds except for t he last where his plane was not acting normally. Come to find out he was in reflex the whole flight after launch. In the end he was third over all of the MVSA guys for both days combined.

Third...Equipment. Things worked pretty much flawlessly and it is a great feeling to finally have ALL of the club winches working and nary a break down. We had maybe 4 or 5 line breaks all weekend. Mostly because of human error. One was from the first launch after restringing a winch but after that it went well. The only complaint I heard was that the winches were stout and my winch made a funny noise. Turns out that after a line went over my winch line and someone launched there was a dog line tangle which forced the brake arm into the drum not only damaging the drum but bending the shaft of the motor. No real biggie as it still worked well. We put out 8 winches. Mostly club winches and the rest were loaners. All consistent. The two NATS winches that have been giving me fits for the past two years seem to be working and we owe much of it to Glauco. He made a new drum over the winter that solved one of them and he retrofitted a new drum shaft with one of his manufacturer and it woke them up. I thanked him by inadvertently stepping on a winch switch while he was shagging the chute giving him a bad rope burn. Sorry for my stupidity again my friend. The rented generator worked great although looking back it may have been over kill. 4000 watts is a bit much as I never heard it load up and it kept the batteries charged. On Saturday the 5 batteries farthest away from the generator were weakening a bit but not by much. A battery swap here and there kept things golden. The issue was that we had one line running down the whole winch line and I think it was running out of voltage by the time it got down to the end of the line. On Sunday I changed things by having two lines each running half the winches. This necessitated the move of the landing tapes and put the winches in the landing path. Unfortunately for Pat McCleve it took it's toll on his Orca. We have had the same set up for the past Gateway Opens that I have been to so it was not an unseen situation. Really no worse than a few years back when you not only had to traverse the pond but a line of winches too to make it to the landing tapes. I found two equipment wagons at Lowes which were so much better than the Harbor Freight ones at the same price. It sure made life easier than in the past. Thanks again to everyone who helped both days getting this all together. It is a lot of work for us all and we can all be proud of our success. Thanks especially to Brendan as he really does a lot of behind the scenes equipment work. Doing everything from testing winches for a month before the contest to a lot of grunt work loading the van and unloading it again.

Robert Samuels: Hi Flyers:  Mark Miller has received a lot of compliments and he earned and deserves them all.  As do his faithful companions, Brendan, Chris, Glauco, Rich, Eddie, Mike, Bob Keeler, and all the others who worked and worked and worked. 

Flying wise the weekend was an incredible show of triumph and sorrow, excitement and "what the hell happened?".   Lift, storms, sink ... and often glorious soaring flights into beautiful skies.  We saw some of the best fliers in the country show their skills and saw the same guys demonstrate that planes just won't go up in sink no matter how good the pilot is.

I had some good flights and a couple of low saves that even I didn't believe could be done.  Being in the right place at the right time helped a lot.  As did knowing (guessing) when to turn and when not to.

I really enjoyed every aspect of the weekend.  Despite the heat, storms, etc.  Overall I felt that everyone was there to have fun and kept it in perspective.  Playing with toy airplanes and talking and working and learning with like minded guys. 

A real downer moment for me was when I was timing my friend and a friend of everybody in the club, Gene Trevinio, when he lost his plane into a black cloud.  Skied out ... waaaay high ... "maybe you should come down a bit Gene" ... "ok, I'll pull the flaps" ... "uh oh, I can't see my plane" ... and he never did ... Awww shoot!

The winners worked hard to win ... and the losers worked just as hard ... but just zigged when they should have zagged.  Darn!

I'm really, really glad I was there.

El Roberto

Glauco Lago: Woo hoo, we survived and put a great show. Have quite a bit of back pain and blisters on hand and feet but it was well worth it. I bet I’m not the only one with some battle wounds since everyone worked hard and hope had a great time too.

 Everything worked fine but only because everyone helped. Robert’s port-a-potty was there in time and at the correct place only because he took care of it. Contest registration, food and water was perfect thanks to Rich Rennecamp and the guys who helped to pick up the food, I believe Pete one day and Bob Keeler the other but I may be wrong.

 How about the chute shaggers, everyone helped but special thanks to Bob Keeler that worked non stop on Sunday launch after launch. Jim Crook also showed up just to help, thanks. Johnny Berlin also is an amazing helper doing whatever was needed, thanks Johnny.

 Ed’s scoring was perfect even when I tried to ruin it. If you don’t know the details, on Sunday round four I had the most sweat per minute flight of the weekend but made it. My timer and I were so excited I forgot to check what he wrote on my card and sure was wrong, instead of 12:01 he wrote 10:01 what caused the need to recall all cards and get things reshuffled since I only notice it when was about ready to fly on round 5. Sorry about that Ed but you handled the pressure really well. Wayne helped a lot on Saturday as Ed’s helper and Chris did the same on Sunday.

 The awards were superb and I heard a lot of comments on how nice the custom pictures are when compared to the standard wood plaques. Thanks to Chris and Mike for hauling their gigantic printers and taking care of all the details, from having frames and paper ready to rushing through the day making sure all was ready at the end.

 So glad to see people we don’t get to see frequently and helping us like Alden and Gene Trevino. Hope to see Alden flying with us again, the same with Pete George. Some regular club members decided only to help but expect to see them flying at the next one. Nelson was there helping all the time and not flying, the same for Jim Crook, Joe, Pete, Bob Keeler and Ed Rau. We missed some regular club pilots like Gene Lindsey, Brian Molloy, Harold, Ken and a few others.

 And how about the equipment, hats off to Mark Miller for everything working as flawless as I have ever seen. People tend to get grumpy when they are tired and maybe not doing too well at the contest but I didn’t hear a peep about the equipment, winches pulled hard through the weekend and on Sunday we were able to setup 8 local winches thanks to loaners from Ed Rau, Mark Miller and Ken Trudeau, thanks guys.

It is an unbelievable amount of work to prepare all the equipment, load, haul all to the field, haul all back, unload and store. At these tasks Mark and Brendan are by themselves, no one else to help and no break, all has to work and it is all behind the scenes. Thanks for all the hard work Mark and Brendan.

 And Keith, how can we survive without his motor home, wonderful setup so preparing the awards and scorekeeping became a little more bearable, thanks Keith.

 Thanks to Mark Nankivil for CDing Sunday. It is so nice seeing a truly experienced CD taking care of the contest and helping a lot on Saturday too.    

 There are many comments on RC group of people already wanting to come back next year, can’t have a better comment.  

As contestants numbers go, our Gateway Open has become the best attended OVSS contest not counting the Nats. This is proof we have a great club and we have been doing a great job year after year.

 Thank you all,

 Glauco

GPS flight log from Glauco Lago’s Aspire during Round 4 on Sunday when he had to really work for the time.  Until the end when the air was all good, as usual.

Chris Lee: One flight on each day stick out in my mind from this past weekend. 

On Saturday, we had a small but powerful thunderstorm cell hit our field square-on in the middle of the day.  Everyone huddled under the EZ-UP canopies and more than a couple succumbed to the winds, (a couple canopies, I mean.)   Then the sun came out and dried us all out, back to the skies!

This experience was fresh in our minds when another ominous black cloud started approaching in the fourth round. The middle two groups had easy air, actually everything was going up so much it was hard to get down, as one poor Supra found out when it disappeared into cloud base.  It has not yet been recovered.  But conditions were changing rapidly as the final flight group approached the winches.

I launched first and at the time it was just a light crosswind. But the gust front hit in about the middle of the launch order and I heard it was horrendous just trying to hold the plane for a proper throw for the guys at the end.

I cruised straight up wind (actually left to right since it was a hard crosswind) and basically held stationary. Then my timer, Glauco, said the planes just upwind of me doing the same were going backwards. A few seconds later my plane jumped straight back 10-15 feet in the sky. I was still maintaining my launch altitude but I decided right then it was time to come back. If anyone managed to get their times in that wind and get back to the field deserved the win! I was getting my plane back.

I went into a 45 deg full-on dive, Glauco said I acted like I made my time and was just diving in from way high to land. I got back over the field boundaries at tree height before I felt comfortable enough to level off. I surfed in some very rowdy ground level turbulence for a little while, but didn't dare drop back to the cluster of trees and try sloping lest I couldn't get back on the field. Eventually hovered around the landing tapes and plopped it down for an unceremonious 4:30 and a 76 landing.

Thus, I was in perfect position to watch the end of Jim Frickey's flight. Talking to him later, I found out he recognized exactly what was going on with the storm front and how to handle it. He said, "When I saw you doing that dive, I told my timer, 'I got him!'" He came back at a more leisurely pace (but still efficiently covering ground) then dropped in over the field to surf in the same ground turbulence for awhile. Then he let the plane go farther upwind past the tapes, whereas I had just hovered it over the landing zone and plopped down somewhere in the area. He went upwind, and then did a full landing approach, the whole downwind, base, final routine. Except the maneuver seemed like it was at Mach 2 as he came screaming around the corner and he didn't touch flaps until he was two feet from the nail. Bang, a 97! And he put over a minute on me in time.

The remaining five planes in the flight group all landed out, which really changed the final standings of the contest. So much to learn! Can't wait for the next 40mph gust front so I can go out and practice.

On Sunday, the most impressive piece of flying I saw has already been mentioned by a few others.  Robert Samuels was dawdling around over the pits and by the grove of trees, slowly sinking out.  It looked like he was just milking the last vestiges of time and drifting downwind to get on line for landing approach.  One more wrap and that would be it.  He started coming home.  Then he took one more wrap and we all laughed, “That’s some wishful thinking!”  But then he took another, and we were really concerned.  He was getting very close to the lone clump of trees we all know so well, and he was at just about the right altitude to land in the very top of one of them.  He drifted downwind past them, still circling hard, making little corrections this way and that.  Mike Johnson’s Xplorer was in the same piece of air, but at a bit more comfortable altitude, so Robert might have had a thermal indicator to help him.  On the other hand, he might have been so focused on his plane’s every movement that he might not have noticed.  But in any case, Robert continued slowly easing downwind behind the trees.  The next time I caught sight of him he was at 200’ and well on his way up for a max.  We know which side of the Hero or Zero equation he fell on this time.  Robert, you’re the Man!

Chris

Glauco and Chris both had GPS loggers in their planes when they flew together in Round 5 in Sunday.  This was the last round of the contest when the dark storm cloud approached from the west.  Click on the picture below to download the Google Earth KMZ files.  You can play the timeline back and watch both planes move simultaneously.  (Chris in red, Glauco in blue)