From all accounts, this was the day that tried to blow Muncie off the planet. Pilots faced wind gusts of up to 30 knots and an average of over 20 as they braved the elements and the judges.
Straight from the AMA’s scoring trailer (called the Whale), ***BAD PUN WARNING***, the
Jonah brothers of scorekeeping, Kent Porter and Dave Langridge, have delivered today’s standings
. So without further ado, check out the standings in the list above for Day 1.
Also….Bill James, NE Region Director and Judge Extraordinaire reports:
Hi Roy,
Well, we just got done with our first day on the NATS. The morning started out fine but as the day went on, the winds picked up to roughly a very gusty 25 to 30 miles per hour. Since I was scheduled to be a judge in Unlimited for the second round, I spent the first couple hours running the stopwatch at the Advanced flight but that left me little to do once the pilots were aware of the flying order. All did well being in the air by the end of the 9th maneuver. When my time came around to judge Unlimited the wind had picked up even more but for most of the Unlimited pilots it did not matter. I personally saw some of the most severe wind corrected flying I had ever seen. It was not uncommon to see a plane at least 30 degree in yaw or even pitch to hold a line. In a wind like this, scores were what you would expect. Everyone had a hard time keeping roll rates even, let alone tracking a straight line.
By 3:45pm Unlimited had finished and by 5:00pm all classes had finished with Sportsman doing 3 rounds for the day and as far as I know, everyone else did two rounds. After a short break, the flight order for Tuesday was created and the unknowns were handed out.
That’s about all for now, more tomorrow evening
Weather for Muncie tomorrow calms down to a easy Texas breeze of only 13 – 15 knots at midday but with cloudy skies and really nice temps (70 is the high). Forecast is for Wednesday to be more of the same.
Should have a blast of updates for the Nats Photo Gallery for you later…
Roy