This year's US National Aerobatic Championship will again be held at Denison, Texas--now known as North Texas Regional Airport KGYI--from Sunday, September 20th to Friday, September 25th. http://www.usnationalaerobatics.org/USN2009/home.html This is a couple of weeks after the Delano contest, which will make a good warmup.

The schedule of flying is now posted http://www.usnationalaerobatics.org/USN2009/schedule.html Practice starts at 8 AM on Saturday and the awards banquet is at 7 PM on Frdiay. Sportsman fly Tues, Wed and Thurs. Intermediate fly Mon, Wed and Thurs. Advanced fly Sun, Mon, Tues and Thurs. Unlimited fly Mon, Tues, Wed and Fri.

I know that at least a couple of current Sunrise pilots one who moved east have expressed an interest in flying at this year's Nationals. Who else is interested? Whether you are flying the contest or just spectating, it should be a really good time.

As you probably guessed from my last post on this subject, I am one of those people who is headed to US Nationals in Denison, Texas. I think that Gray Brandt will also be there. Will anyone else from Chapter 36 be there? I will try and keep you up to date on my progress and the progress of anyone else who flies with Team Sunrise.

Prior to the Delano contest I did not have any coaching of my flying the Pitts. On Saturday Michael was good enough to drive out and give me the coaching I have been missing. I found out that I need to work on increasing my roll rate without bobbling the stop. On Sunday I went back up and my roll rate is getting better. Now if I can pull and push the nose into place while rolling with and stopping from full aileron deflection, all of my rolling maneuvers are going to look better.

You have heard me say it before but it is worth repeating: there is nothing as valuable as coaching once you have progressed to the point where you are comfortable monitoring your control inputs while making changes to the maneuvers you want to improve.

Later this week I am going to fly over to Borrego Springs and spend the night in the Borrego Springs Resort because I know that I can leave there at O-dark-early without worrying about coastal cloud cover.

The next morning I will fly to Oklahoma City and pick up Michael, who has agreed to give me two days of coaching just prior to the contest. We are going to the El Reno airport (KRQO), which is just 20 nm away. After he finishes whipping me into shape, I will return Michael to KOKC and head off to Nationals in Denison. Heady stuff! Win, lose or draw it is going to be a great opportunity to show the rest of the country that the laid-back dudes from Southern California are serious about their aerobatics.

After training last week with Michael in El Reno, Oklahoma, I arrived at Denison, Texas today. My time with Michael deserves its own post, which I will do later. Just let me say that El Reno is a great place to train and my time with Michael is always well spent.

It is Gray Brandt and myself who are representing IAC Chapter 36. Gray had his known Advanced flight yesterday and his free flight today. I start flying Sportsman tomorrow--assuming the weather is good, which looks unlikely at the moment.

There are a large number of cool aerobatic airplanes sitting on the ramp and many different types of airplanes. Just about everything I have ever seen in a contest is here.

Gray just got back from South Africa where he was helping take care of his father-in-law, who was just released from the hospital before Gray left. So after very little practice he was 19th after his first flight in a field of 23, and he moved up to 17th after his second flight. He hasn't seen his score sheets yet so he doesn't yet know what the judges think he did well or not so well. Tomorrow he will find out.

What is cool is that you too can get the almost real-time results off the Internet: http://www.usnationalaerobatics.org/USN2009/scores.html Some scores are delayed for a few hours--perhaps for a video review--but most appear shortly after a pilot lands.

The wind was howling today with Rinaldo estimating the winds were 35 knots during his flight, mostly blowing down the box, and he was top dog (scorer) in the second Advanced flight. It is very impressive to see how round the Advanced pilots are making the looping section of their figures with the winds they faced.

This evening I had dinner with Gray, Tim, Rinaldo, Malcom and a pilot flying Sportsman. Just before dinner there were flash flood alerts and Mammatus clouds that passed right overhead. There was a spectacular lighting show in the area, but very little rain. The outlook for tomorrow is overcast at 2,500 until 6PM, so there seems little chance we will fly.

I am staying in the Holiday Inn Express in Sherman, Texas, which I can highly recommend if you come to Nationals next year. The hotel is new and it ia very nice for $73 per night.

The pilot briefing is at 7 AM tomorrow so I will say good bye for now.

7AM: This morning the weather in Denison is 400 scattered, 700 scattered, 1200 broken. We are on call-back for a pilot meeting in two hours, waiting for the weather to improve.

9AM: The weather is lower now than it was at 7AM, but it is starting to improve 80 miles to the west at Sherman. We will meet again in two hours.

11AM: The weather is lower still and there is a squall line to the west of us that is moving quickly. The next call-back is at 2PM.

2PM: The weather clears finally and the Unlimited Category begins their free sequence. The first pilot flys through a cloud and everyone comes back down on the ground to wait another 15 minutes. After 20 minutes the second Unlimited pilot is sent back up and completes his sequence. We are on! We work through the pilots, the first pilot flies last and the sun is setting as he lands. Tim Just was the next to last pilot to fly and he said the conditions were great.

Sportsman is up first tomorrow morning. I am 24th out of 25 to fly.

I just checked the scores at Nationals and see that Malcolm and Reinaldo are #1 and #2 in Advanced... congratulations to you both! I'm not sure if the Unknown II counts toward determining the national champion, but either way it looks like IAC 36 will be well represented on the US team for the next AWAC. Great job guys!

On Wednesday the weather was overcast all day, but good for flying. We flew Sportsman, Advanced, and Intermediate. Gray Brandt moved up in the Advanced Category, though at the moment the results are not available on the IAC website so I can't tell you his scores. This was his last flight for Championship points, though he is going to fly the second Advanced Unknown, which will be used for Advanced team selection.

I flew the first flight and I am happy with the results. I flew all of my figures correctly and did not leave anything out. There are a number of us with nearly the same score and I know how to improve tomorrow. Mostly I need to fly more aggressively and not be as timid as I was today. I had a good flight scoring 79%, but I want to do better than 14th place out of 22 Sportsman power pilots. Tomorrow we fly first again.

[This was posted on Thursday.]

Today I flew better than yesterday. I went out more aggressively and the judges rewarded me with higher scores. I also had four outs compared to just one yesterday, but I think I can bring that back in tomorrow. Outs are only five point deductions.

I also had one judge give me three low calls on consecutive figures, but I went back and checked my helmet cam: 2,000 feet AGL was a low as I ever was, and the bottom of the Sportsman box is 1,500 feet AGL. Fortunately a low from a single judge is not a penalty. With seven judges it would take four judges to penalize you. One of the pilots we know got low and his whole flight was zeroed. Texas is a long way to come to draw zeros.

My 45 lines in the reverse shark's tooth were shallow today, but I did not try to fix it and the judges gave me good scores. Michael taught me to keep what you have whenever you can, because if you fix it, the judges know exactly what you messed up. It is good advice.

Between the outs, over-floating my loops and the shark's tooth, I can improve my scores tomorrow. I am looking forward to doing so.

US Nationals is over and it was a good contest. I placed 11th out of 22 Sportsman, which is not as good as I had hoped, but I have to remember that I still have less than 10 hours of aerobatics in the Pitts. My scores were very consistent and I did not zero any figures. I learned a lot, I am flying the Pitts better than ever and I am looking forward to flying a Pitts in Intermediate next year. If I make enough progress in my flying I will probably be back at US Nationals next year.

Gray flew the Unknown-II sequence for Advanced pilots today. It is used to help determine who will be on the US Advanced Team. It is like the Unknown-I sequence he already flew, except it is higher in degree of difficulty--K factor--and it contained a number of "pushes", which are painful to do. He finished 16th in the flight and 15th overall for the four flights. Advanced is probably the hardest category there is right now with lots of very experienced pilots staying in Advanced when they could be flying in Unlimited. The great news is that California pilots took the top three positions: congratulations go out to Malcolm Pond, Reinaldo Beyer and Ben Freelove.

Gray and I are flying back starting early tomorrow morning. During our stay in Denison aviation gas and hangar space were bought and rented from Texoma Jet Center, which did a very nice job: we recommend them highly. We look forward to seeing you back at Sunrise.

Gray and I made it back in under 11 hours and 5 stops, which he said was record time. We had light headwinds early on that abated as we crossed Arizona.

I put up a video of my third flight on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddH9ZcSIc0s



You will see a number of things I can work on, but all things considered I am happy with it as a starting point to flying the Pitts even better next year.

I write to offer my congratulations to Daniel for his success at Nationals.

Eleventh place--success? You bet: with only one truncated coaching session and 10 hours hours total aerobatic experience in the S2B, his steady improvement in the three contest flights and his overall finish are both really impressive. Ten pilots may have finished ahead of him, but he beat the other eleven.

Daniel and I had lots of fun coaching in El Reno, OK (I coached, he flew). The box is in the middle of a great deal of nowhere, our airport hosts were welcoming and helpful, the loaner car worked, the town was charming, and Montana Mike's Steakhouse was friendly and nourishing.

Daniel flew Sunday and Monday, 9/20-21 and got in 4 flights before approaching weather scared him out of town. The season's first winter storm was roaring in from the northwest, and another two hours' delay would have seen the plane back in the hangar and the two of us staring blankly at pouring rain.

It was my first trip to El Reno--I'm looking forward to more.

Photos of the pilots who flew at US Nationals are now on the US Nationals website : http://www.iacusn.org/USN2009/Pilots.html They include one of me, kneeling next to the Sunrise Pitts S2B and wearing a Sunrise shirt and an IAC Chapter 36 hat. My photo is the first one in row five--Gray Brandt is the first photo in row eight--Malcolm Pond is the third photo in row twelve--Reinaldo Beyer is the third photo in row seventeen.

If you look through the photo albums you will find a number of additional pictures of all of us: http://www.iacusn.org/USN2009/albums.html I think that photographer Laurie Zaleski did a really nice job--and thanks again to IAC Chapter 36's own Randy Owens for his work as webmaster that make the photos so easily available.

I should mention that Randy Owens won this year's IAC Kathy Jaffe Award: "The purpose of this award is to recognize an outstanding volunteer during the previous year. General guidelines are that this person is one who consistently, unselfishly and eagerly accepts more responsibilities than he or she can handle, meets these responsibilities with tireless effort, efficiency and a smile, and who places the needs of others above his or her own, making the sport of aerobatics more enjoyable for everyone." Randy is definitely the hardest working volunteer, who, paradoxically, does much for US Nationals but never attends Nationals due to family commitments. Well done Randy!