by Tony Fandino

 

Well another year has come around and its time for the second IMAC contest of the Southeast region the 2007 Amps Aerobatics Challenge. What a pleasure it was to see a weather forecast that showed good weather all weekend. The contest in the past years has been plagued with some really cold and windy weather, rare for south Florida. Friday the pilots started arriving early getting all their gear and trailers in position for what is predicted to be a large contest, before I left my office I checked the computer to see that we had 45 pilots pre registered. By Friday's end there were a good amount of pilots there all getting in their practice flights and getting used to the field.

Saturday started off with clear skies and a mild 73 degrees, after we got every pilot checked in and given their little goodies the final pilot count was 36. Competition started promptly at 9:00am with basic split into two groups flying on two flight lines. Flight line A and Flight line B the A group was flying their first round while the B group was flying their 2nd round. This allowed me to free up all the more experienced competitors to help out all the basic pilots and keep things flowing smoothly, there were 14 in basic alone. Initially we expected over twenty but we had a few no shows and honestly it made things more manageable. So Basic gets in their first flight and we finish the first group moving right in to the other class's to get there first round in . After the other class's finished the first round we brought back the four judges from basic and switch the groups and got all the basic pilots another flight to complete their first and second rounds. We then went right back into the second round for all the rest of the class's and with just a little luck both flight lines were ending almost at the same time. I don't think we ever had any of the flight lines working by themselves. We concluded flying the first day by about 4 pm and this gave me the opportunity to open the field for open flying to let all the guys have some wild fun. At 5:30 we had our pilots meeting where i handed out the next days unknown. All day we had a steady stream of spectators coming and going i believe we had about 100 cars come for day one of the competition. We down here have a big spectator turnout at our contest. We had some great sponsors step up and donate some real cool prizes. I was giving away stuff to the pilots and spectators all day, by the end of the day i had gone through the entire list of pilots and still had prizes left for the second day. All the pilots were ecstatic and really appreciated the attention.

Day two is here and what a relief that its not in the 30's. Last year when I arrived at the field there was ice on the ground, very unnatural for Miami Fla. and it made for a very uncomfortable day, BUT NOT THIS YEAR. The temperature was awesome in the mid 70's and the wind from the north at about 9 mph. We stared out on one flight line to allow all the pilots a chance to fly their unknowns with no other planes in the sky. We quickly knocked out the unknowns and went back to the format we used the day before to give the basic pilots a chance to fly two more rounds followed by the rest of the classes finishing there third round of knowns. Everything seemed to go like clockwork after the competitive flying concluded we had 4 of our pilots put on a free style demo for the crowed. I have to give a big thank you to all our loyal sponsors, whom without we could not have put on this type of contest. BIG Thanks to Carden Aircraft, Smart Fly, Horizon Hobbies, Aircraft international, Aeroworks, Aerotech, Jtec Radiowave, Air Wild Hobbies, Great planes, Lite Pilots, Cutting edge graphics, Dynamic Balsa, Wild Berry productions, Micro Fasteners, Aero Protect, Warrick Hobby super store, RC Hobby world in Tampa, Composite-arf, and Crown Hobbies

For the results: