Last weekend was the US Team Selection at the Toledo, Ohio Weak Signals Field. It was a pretty fun contest. A couple people showed up who have never touched an F5D racer before, a couple of Quarter-40 pilots. After some crash course lessons (no pun intended) on how it's done they were off and running. For the majority of the group it was a war of attrition; trying to keep the gear running well and from letting the "Factory Installed Smoke" out of things. I'll soon be posting some pics of the group and field where it took place.
Final standings:
1st- Troy Peterson
2nd- Kevin Matney
3rd- Jeff Adamisin
4th/Alternate- Dan Kane
Thanks to the guys out there for putting on a nice contest!

Troy-

Congrats to you and your fellow selectees . The '02 Team looks suspiciously like the '00 Team, 'cept for Adamisin, Jeff vs Adamisin, Archie. Tell us what kind of times were being made and were there any more serious competitors besides you three?

V/R

Steve Manganelli, AKA Prof. Maneuver

Sorry I couldn't be there. How many entrants were there?

There were five entrants, less than I figured there would be. Where were 'yas Dave?
We had 12 rounds, two throw out rounds. 1 cut is 10% time penalty, 2 cuts you're DQ'd and have to land.
My times were: 75.73, 74.14, 79.48, 81.08, 78.11, 75.66, 77.84, 72(+1 cut).
Kevin: 84.5, 87.67, 92.2, 86.67, 88.81, 95.08, 94.16, 94.45.
Jeff: 84.31, 117.01, 92.55, 95.29, 83.7, 92.27, 87.82, 89.84
Dan: 300, 89.2, 300, 81.5, 79.83, 79.02, 81.59, 90.22 (I think 80 +1 cut).
Pete: 300, 300, 300, 300, 103.61, 90.63, 105.79, 88.92.
Dan Kane was definately the success story of the weekend. He showed up never having flown one of these before and knew very little about the equipment. He had a rough start, munching his plane a couple times, but we got him back up and running. His Quarter-40 racing experience showed in his fast times. Kevin and I didn't have any problems with equipment. I flew my Hacker 10-cell motor on 9-CP-1700s. It was a conservative set up compared to what Robert Wimmer is running but proved to be fast. I had another plane ready to go that pulled over 100amps static but I didn't want to risk melting anything down early in the contest. The other guys flew a combination of Astro motors and Hackers on 9-10 cells depending.
Here are a couple of links to some pics: http://hometown.aol.com/troyflyboy/page17.html http://hometown.aol.com/troyflyboy/page18.html
ps: Thanks to Steve Belnap at Diversity Model Aircraft (DMA) for batteries and Steve Neu for his support.


[This message has been edited by Troy (edited 09-07-2001).]

Man I wish I could have been in Toledo last weekend! Congratulations to you Troy and to Kevin, Jeff, and Dan. I'm sure you guys will make US look great!