Day 4 results

Down to the wire, Bill Cooke had to watch from the sideline, having been the first and 
only contestant to lose both models. 

Rich made an ill-fated decision on the Open Spot Landing, choosing to go with a very 
skimpy 1x10 streamer. This lead to an unsafe landing speed of 43 fps, disqualifying him 
for the event and also wiping out his last model before he had a chance to fly the drag 
race. Just for kicks, I slipped him a third model for a non-official practice flight for the 
drag race, and it caught a thermal, drifted more than 7 minutes, and left the park, so he 
would have also DQ’d in the drag. The luck factor certainly burned Rich today.

Michael Pontikos decided to outdo Peter Stanley’s effort to hit the OSL target from 700 
foot altitude, using a D21-7 to hit over 3300 foot altitude. Amazingly, he came back 
down 73.5 feet away from the target. Not enough to place, but quite an achievement! He 
followed that up with an interesting drag race strategy—he used his 40” parachute 
duration configuration, upped it to another D21-7, and sent the model off towards the 
stratosphere. He stayed aloft nearly 5 times as long as his closest rival for drag duration, 
but drifting nearly 2 miles lost the model and DQ’d him for the event.

Bruce Levison’s drag race was another fine example of attention to detail. His -10.377 
rod angle landed him 3rd closest to the pad, but he smoked off the rod with a high-thrust 
D24-7. He also came in right at the edge of safety (and risked a DQ for the event) landing 
at 38.2 fps. The well-designed and balanced entry tied him for first for the event with Bob 
Cox, who has dominated nearly every virtual drag race.

Dave Allen made a noble effort to unseat Bob Cox from the throne, flying a respectable 
pair of B-parachute flights, the first of which was barely 100 feet from the edge of the 
park. Still, he only managed fourth for the event, which wasn’t quite enough to displace 
Bob. Bob sent his second streamer duration flight into a huge thermal, and after 8.5 
minutes it climbed back up from 250 feet to over 1000. It went to the warning track at 
2150 feet, but stayed in the park for one of the most amazing flights in the meet. Bob’s 
streamer duration flight was enough to propel him into first for that event, and this proved 
to be the difference in a very close race between him and David.

Overall, this was a very competitive contest, with Bob Cox taking first, rookie David 
Allen giving him a serious challenge, and Bruce Levison hanging just a bit back in third. 
Bruce seemed to get stuck with what NAR competitors call “best flight points”, meaning 
he frequently came in 5th, with only the top 4 finishers getting higher points. Bruce came 
in 5th in 3 of the 5 events, and first in the other 2. He was likely only a couple flights 
away from sweeping the field.