{"id":11306,"date":"2024-07-22T12:40:11","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T16:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/?p=11306"},"modified":"2024-07-22T12:40:11","modified_gmt":"2024-07-22T16:40:11","slug":"2024-fac-nats-after-action-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/2024-fac-nats-after-action-report\/","title":{"rendered":"2024 FAC Nats After Action Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are always plans and expectations when you go to a large and important contest like the 2024 FAC Nats.\u00a0 I think everyone has dreams of how it will turn out.\u00a0 Mine were big plans; I intended to defend my 2022 Non-Scale Championship.\u00a0 This is not particularly easy as you must place significantly high in most, if not all of the non-scale events.\u00a0 This year, that included: Old Time Stick, Jimmie Allen, Old Time Fuselage, 2-Bit, Half-Wakefield, and Embryo.\u00a0 I was also defending NoCal Champ and had several Scale events that I intended to fly.\u00a0 All-in-all, I registered for 27 events to be flown over the three days of official flying.\u00a0 That\u2019s a lot of flying and it is known (to me, at least) that I would never get all of them flown, but you have to have big plans to make big things happen.<\/p>\n

As I posted earlier, I worked hard between the mid-June contest in Muncie and the mid-July contest in Geneseo to fix and build planes.\u00a0 I built three new planes (Miss Production for OT Stick, KK Gipsy for \u00bd Wake, and Folkerts SK-2 for NoCal) and repaired 10 planes.\u00a0 Some of this worked and some of it was for naught, but all of it had to be done.<\/p>\n

Sometimes Hung smiles on you and sometimes Hung toys with you.\u00a0 He was toying with me all week.\u00a0 Invariably, I would put up a test flight and it would be well over a max and I would go to official flights and struggle to get even one of the three official flights to exceed two minutes.\u00a0 This is so frustrating when a) you know the planes are good for it and b) you know you will likely need three maxes to even compete for the top spot in many events.\u00a0 But half of success is just showing up, so I kept plugging away.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t bore you with too many details, but I had some spectacular flights and almost all of them were not officials.\u00a0 One was a test flight on my Miss Production:\u00a0 the DT went off dutifully at 2:05 and the plane landed at 3:06 \u2013 deep in the 9-foot-tall corn.\u00a0 Thanks to Tom Hallman, Pat Murray, and Winn Moore it was found and I could continue \u2013 no, START \u2013 flying Old Time Stick.<\/p>\n

Another \u201cthanks\u201d needs to go out to Vance Gilbert.\u00a0 On Wednesday evening, he stopped by when I was flying my Jumbo Focke-Wulf FW-189.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had it for a couple years now, but can only really fly it at large contests.\u00a0 He helped me with the final trimming and it started climbing out and flying right.\u00a0 His recommendations?\u00a0 \u201cThat thing is ready, stop messing around and put some turns in those motors.\u201d\u00a0 He was right.\u00a0 More Power and it climbed to altitude and got some decent times.\u00a0 I flew it in WWII-Combat (a mass Launch event).\u00a0 There were 31 pilots and the first round took out 11 \u2013 but not me!\u00a0 I made it to the second round (where they took out 10) and made a respectable middle-of-the-pack 14th<\/sup> place showing.\u00a0 I was satisfied.\u00a0 Few people fly models that large in WWII and virtually no one is crazy\/stupid enough to fly a large TWIN-engined model.\u00a0 So, being crazy\/stupid, I did and I was happy with the results.\u00a0 I know some people took videos of the rounds, I’ like to see my plane in action.<\/p>\n

I later flew it for times in Jumbo Scale.\u00a0 At the FAC Nats, Jumbo requires an Average of three flights to compute your overall flight score.\u00a0 One single flight isn\u2019t good enough; you need three flights.\u00a0 So I had a decent first flight (roughly 55-seconds) \u2013 the photo here is where it landed.\u00a0 And then I did a second flight after adding a touch of nose weight to help the pitchy glide.\u00a0 The video shows that entire flight \u2013 Including the reason why I didn\u2019t get to make a third flight.\u00a0 Regardless, I took 5th<\/sup> in Jumbo (awards are to five places at the FAC Nats) \u2013 again, I was pleased with the performance.\u00a0 Watch the video – the ending may surprise you.<\/p>\n

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