Though I am personally saddened that the 2009 season has come to an end, I am looking forward to the 2010 season and making it even better. What I'm about to do is give everyone an overview of how the 2009 season went. I will not go into any great detail about any one event. I will however highlight the new locations. Here we go.
The 2009 season started out in Hurlock MD this year at the Eastern Shore Club. While this was a new location for us and the weather forecast was for rain all weekend, we had 11 diehard IMAC pilots show up. In the end we were able to get 3 known rounds in and the unknowns all on Saturday. This location is very very very large and very flat, 1 mile rollers would not be an issues if you could actually see your plane out that far. It's that big. Also a glass smooth runway that is around a 1000 feet long by 150 feet wide
The next new location was in Hagerstown MD at the Pegasus RC club. This particular contest was voted, by everyone in the region, to be the best one for the year. I can certainly understand why, the food was not your normal hamburgers and hot dogs. While we did have those, the cook was actually a chef and you could tell because all of the food was done to restaurant quality. He even did Kabobs, which a lot of people loved. Jim also had some very unusual awards and made it a point to thank everyone with an award. Jim also setup a dinner (our first one for the region in many years) at fine local Italian restaurant
Tony Bonanno's Black Dirt contest was also a new one for the 2009 season. Once again, this was a well run contest with lots of interesting things. One thing I'm sure everyone will never forget is the way the ground moved when walking on it. While feeling very soft on your feet it seemed to move and inch or more which was very disconcerting to the people that were sitting in chairs that you happen to walk past. They could actually feel the ground move. Don't let this determine if you go to a contest there in 2010. This is a fine facility with intersecting runways and no issues for overfly, sound, what have you. At the time of this writing, it seems that most everyone wants to have the 2010 regional contest here and I'd have to agree with that. Tony was very up on his game for this contest, even doing a couple of very large “hero's” (subs) for Saturday on the fly. This is the contest in which we all just showed up at the local Outback. Was very cool to see.
While creating the 2009 contest calendar, we actually started to run out of spaces for contests. We had to turn away a couple of places at first (PaxAero and DWG) but in the end, we had one contest cancel and we offered the spot to both PaxAero and DWG. DWG had a pylon race that weekend and PaxAero was able to jump right in there. In two weeks, Brian F and Troy Wallace had it all setup. Excellent work guys.
It is my understanding that DWG definitely wants to be back in the 2010 season.
These contests are the ones that have been around a long time, CAPI, New Hampshire, Woodstock just to name a few. Without these contests we would be hard pressed to fill our calendar.
The NE Canadian contests are next. I've tried hard this season to learn as much as I can about the Canadian contests and their locations and how long they have been running but I must say I have somewhat failed in that. The best I can tell you if you are interested in that and I hope you are is to go to http://www.peneloperc.com. My apologies to the Canadian Contest Directors, I fell on my face on this one and I assure you by the time 2010 starts I'll have a much better handle on it.
At this time, myself and the ARD's are discussing some calendar changes. If you look at the NE region news and events section on the IMAC site, you will see a contest already there that is being held in VA in the SE region. That is one change you will see. I plan to have border contests listed and they are returning the favor.
Without mentioning names, an idea was proposed to me about having a NE/SE shootout early next season. I created a new thread asking for thoughts on this and the idea was so overwhelmingly approved it is going to happen, as to when and where, at the time I am writing this I have no idea but stay tuned to the IMAC site and It will be announced.
Also, we started something we call an “IMAC Primer”. The first one was held in mid-April down in Hurlock MD and to the best of my knowledge we did 5 more, possibly 6 in all, a second one in Hurlock, another at Pegasus, and one in the New England states, I think it was Woodstock. And the last one I am aware of at a field in NJ. These things became a huge hit. We did get people come out and try IMAC by holding these events. Look for more of these in 2010, however we need some different locations.
I wish to ask everyone to be on the lookout for new clubs to have contests at, run the primers at, things like that. If you are not sure a location is right for a Primer or a contest, just ask me or the ARD for the region.
We have documentation that can be sent to the location (club) on the benefits of holding wither a primer or a contest.
Again, that's about it for now, thanks to everyone that attended all of the contests, primers and everything else we did. I, for one, am certainly looking forward to doing it all over again in 2010.
Bill James
North East Regional Director