XFC 2005 - The Winners!

[jbourke]

I just got back from the flying field. The competition today was tremendous with some of the best flying I've ever seen.

The final standings are:

Airplanes:
1. Andrew Jesky
2. John Glezellis
3. Kelly Gerber
4. Jason Danhakl
5. Chris Maier
6. Mitch Buckley
7. Jason Noll

Helicopters:
1. Curtis Youngblood
2. Alan Szabo
3. Scott Gray
4. Mark Fadely
5. Marcus Kim
6. Marty Kuhns
7. Danny Szabo

Naturally, we'll be following up this evening with photos taken during the day.

Jim

[Jeff Swartz]

Jim, I have to 2nd that. Todays flying was definately the best I have every seen out of EVERY ONE of those top 7 guys!!

I heard most all of them say "that was the best flight of my life!" when returning from the flight line!! ;)

Congrats to all

[mongo]

how bout finishing out the list fer us with the 8-21 guys.

they may not have made the finals, but they still beat the guys that didna bother to be there.

[SnakeDriver]

It's not a matter of not bothering to be there, you have to be invited by the XFC committee. If they had more than 21 heli guys we'd still be there waiting for them to get done flying! :)

8th Jerry Sudimick
9th Jim Stark
10th Colin Bell
11th Paul Soha
12th Anthony Jager
13th Andy Rummer
14th Steve McFall
15th Paul Lison
16th Justin Moore
17th Alex Rodriguez
18th Jeff Swartz
19th Malorie Zastrow
20th Jeff Green
21st Pete Niotis

[hondalan]

How about the other spots for the airplane guys? I am really curious about this.

[SnakeDriver]

Sorry, I paid no attention to the airplane standings.

I did notice that several of the top airplane competitiors didn't participate this year. I don't know if there was another event going on somewhere at the same time or what..

[KeyKey]

Am I missing something here? What happened to Jason Noll on Sunday? Maybe it's posted somewhere in all the XFC threads but I havent seen it.

Im just curious how he managed to go from 2nd place in the begininng to the bottom on Sunday? Did his routine go south or did all the other pilots just step it up that much on Sunday?

[jbourke]

Jason had the best flight in the 1st known round on Sunday morning and was in good position to finish at the top of the list.

Unfortunately, he had a problem with his radio programming that forced him to scratch his first unknown round on Sunday.

In his second known round, Jason again scored well. This time he had the third highest score.

At this point Jason was still in a good position to finish at or near the top of the list.

But then in the second unknown sequence, the tail of his airplane touched the ground during a rolling harrier. His round was scratched. Since the worst score is thrown out he could have easily placed in the top 3 with only 1 scratch, possibly even taking the contest. But the second zero score mathematically made that impossible.

Andrew and John flew their best rounds of the contest in the second unknown on Sunday, by the way. Jason needed a big score to win and you have to hand it to him because he went for it even though he could have played conservatively and easily taken at least third place.

Jim

[jbourke]

These are low quality but it will help everyone who wants to know what the final totals were for all the pilots.

[jbourke]

Pete Niotis didn't have a chance this year due to engine troubles, by the way. His scoring was excellent when he was able to put flights in.

In general I felt the airplane competition was closer than the helis. The scores seem to reflect that. Curtis Youngblood stayed ahead of Alan Szabo for the whole weekend and they ultimately finished with 2000 points for Curtis versus 1933 for Alan.

With the airplanes, however, we had a real battle going for most of the contest. No one could predict which pilot would end up on top. Even minutes before the announcement was made most of the pilots seemed to think it was a toss-up between John and Andrew. They finally finished less than 3 points away from each other, with Andrew totaling 2000 and John 1997.

Jim

[KeyKey]

Thanks for the info Jim. It did seem like a severe drop to go from 2nd to last place on Sunday. I knew something must have gone wrong. I saw Jason's routine the previous weekend when he came down to fly in our charitable airshow and I was very impressed. He seemed to be right on track with the music and unbelievably ON THE DECK!

He personally made me cringe a few times with his rollers 6" from wingtip to the ground. But that was only during the first flight.......after that I realized he was too comfortable at that altitude even in the 15mph gusting winds.

And the good news is he's still way young and there are many many years ahead for him and some first place XFC trophies!