Perfect is the best and only word I can use to describe the weather for this year’s Scale Aerobatics competition held August 6th-7th at the Chatham Aeronauts field in Chatham, Ontario. Temperatures in the mid 20s with light winds both days, at times it was difficult to decide which way to take off.

Preparations for this event started many months In fact in late February and early March. Our chairman, Mike Clemmens, was looking for an event director without success. After some serious consideration I decided rather than see the event being dropped I would take on the task of contest director (CD).

I placed a call to Gerry Shaw, MAAC SE Zone director and 2005 Nats Co-ordinator and found out that SA was scheduled for the weekend of August 13-14. Because of a previous commitment I would be unable to do it on that weekend but I proposed to Gerry that if he could move our SA event to the weekend of August 6-7 then I would CD it. He called me back a day later and said that this was not a problem so now I was stuck.

Next I made a call to my good friend, Bob Hudson, who happen to be at a contest in Florida at the time, (early March) to ask him if he would consider co-CDing the event with me. After some initial hesitation he agreed and I am sure glad he did because he has a lot of experience running contests like these and frankly I don’t know what I would have done without him.

In early May Bob and I attended a Nats Planning meeting at the Chatham airport with Gerry Shaw and most of the other event directors. Logistical issues and field layouts as well as a variety of other matters were discussed and we went away with a good feeling about the upcoming Nationals. Bob and I got together a couple of time in the weeks that followed plus numerous phone calls to put it all together.

The event itself went off without a hitch. I got there late Thursday night and parked the camper for the weekend. Other campers and competitors started arriving Friday morning and by mid afternoon there were a lot of flying, trimming and final field preparations happening. It was evident early that this was going to be a great weekend.

Saturday morning dawned with beautiful weather and we had the first competitors in the air by 9:15. When everything was tallied up there were 31 pilots present ready to compete.

We managed to get the last fliers finished a few minutes past 6pm. This was perfect timing as Norm McLellan (local club member) had arranged for a BBQ dinner at the field and it was ready to be served at 6 o’clock. What a dinner it was and attended by over 50 people. We had pulled pork on a bun with real southern baked apple beans, baked potato and corn on the cob. In addition Shirley McLellan (Norms wife) had made her famous strawberry pie for everyone served with ice cream. All this for only $15.00 each. Thank you very much to the McLellan’s for arranging all of that.

Sunday morning again we had perfect flying conditions and it would stay like that for the rest of the day. A quick pilots meeting at 8:45am to give out the Unknowns for the day. Everyone would fly one more round of known plus one round of unknown. Basic is the exception to this as they don’t fly unknowns, so they got in an additional 2 rounds of Knowns for a total of 5 rounds for the contest.

All official competition was finished shortly after lunch with only the free style left to fly. Eight pilots in total signed up for this part of the event and what a show they put on. Everyone has four minutes to fly the best free style routine they can put together. To my knowledge this is the largest field of competitors in the free style event in Canada to date.

At about 3pm all the flying was done and the final scores were computed and the trophy presentations were about to begin. Our MAAC President Carl Layden, who was a terrific help during entire contest, was on hand to give out the trophies and after a few words from him as well as Bob Hudson and my self, we wrapped it up and said our goodbyes. See you next year.

To all the people who helped in some way to put this contest together I say "Thank You". Gerry Shaw for registration, and arranging trophies etc from MAAC. To Norm McLellan for local logistics issues such as a PA system etc.

I would especially like to thank Art Penner and Eric Gallas for their tireless efforts in tabulations all weekend, you guys made my job so much easier as scoring is usually one of the main headaches for a CD. Thanks again.

In conclusion let me say that it was a privilege for me along with my co-cd Mr. Bob Hudson to Direct this event.

I believe that Scale Aerobatics is alive and well in Canada and growing at a fairly rapid pace. 

Now it is up to us to build on this strength and growth to make sure that this trend continues in the future.

Ivan Kristensen

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