2012 US Scale Masters Championship event

[bwboland]

2012 US Scale Masters Championship event
Hello to all US Scale Masters members and friends.

The 2012 Championship event is just around the corner. I wish to inform all we will be holding general membership meeting at the Champs on Thursday night of the event. I wish to invite all for updates for 2013 and Q&A.

Hope to see you all on Thursday night. I will be posting more info here on all Championship plans!

Best regards,

Bernie Boland
US Scale Master Chairman

[bwboland]

Hello USSMA members and guest,

Well we are now just 2 weeks away from the 33rd US Scale Masters championships in Rosewood Indiana. The Ohio river View RC flyers (Host club) along with their first class team have been working hard all year preparing for you! Mike and team are excited to host the 2012 USSMA event. This is the second time for them to host the US Championship event for us. I can tell you they have raised the bar and have done a world class job preparing the sight and logistics for all of the contestants.

This event is shaping up as possibly one of the best ever in USSMA history for sure. I can tell you the flying field is world class.

The host club is as prepared as it gets. Please register for your static times as soon as possible. I plan on posting the "Chairman's view" daily throughout the event so please stay tuned for pictures and personal views of the event.

I wanted to point out a few of the after hour festivities. Thursday night at the host hotel ZAP is hosting the "ZAP ROOM" please stop by for a beverage and snack along with all the fun stories and interaction with our USSMA members and friends.

Friday night we have the hanger party, more details to come!

See all of you at the US Scale Masters 2012 Championships!

Cheers,

Bernie Boland
USSMA Chairman

[bwboland]

Hello all,

The 2012 USSMA Championship event is now history. I like to start by thanking the host club and all the event staff that made the event as smooth as it was. Special thanks to Earl Dever, Michael Hunt and CD Michael Caldwell. We had a lower than desired turn out but the flying sight was world class. Bill Beach owner of the property is a great host; this man never stopped working the entire time.

To the event!

I got there on Wednesday the 5th and the field was already busy as can be. The local news channel was out filming the planes getting video for the local news during the contest days. Michael Caldwell had just about everything ready to rock and roll. Weather stirred up a bit on Wednesday evening with winds close to 60MPH and hard rain but the field looked like nothing had happened in the AM the next morning other than the few puddles.

Mitch showed up in the afternoon on Wednesday for registration but we elected to move it to the host hotel due to weather. The hotel registration was busy and stayed open until like 9:00 PM.

Thursday started the static judging. All the judges were well prepped and ready to go so they started first thing in the AM. All the static judging was done by 4:00 PM I believe. Mitch was busy loading all of the registered pilots into the new normalized software getting ready for round one in the AM on Friday. Just about all of the pilots and crews head to the host hotel for the ZAP Tap room excitement for the evening. Thank s to Herschel we all had a few cold pops and a great time. At 8:00 PM the Board of Directors and Area director headed off to a different room for our BOD meeting. Lots of fun here at the BOD meeting but this will be covered on a different post.

Friday weather was great we started on time after the pilot meeting. No problem with any of the contestant planes during flight and round one went as planned. The noon time demos started as planned while the judges got lunch. Once the judges had lunch and had been rotated we moved on to round 2. We had a bit of a wind stir up in the afternoon but easily dealt with by the pilots. Again a great round and no problems! Again the pilots and crews like cattle headed to the host hotel for the Hanger party sponsored by Barbee Concrete. The party ran until better than 10:00 PM. Great food and cold soda pop for all, Thanks Mike Barbee!

Saturday morning during the pilots meeting I brought up the topic of score normalization and how the BOD had voted that it would start at the Champs in 2012. I asked all of the pilots to look at the scores on round 1 and 2 come back down to registration for a vote on using normalized or the old way.  We voted and all but one pilot want to use normalized scoring. I see this as a huge step for the Scale community to adopt new scoring with this acceptance levels.

Off we went into round 3. Weather was great, cool and clear. Flying scores seemed to improving each round as the pilots settled in. Once again the noon time demos hit the air with excitement. The war bird groups seem to be the big hit with the spectators. Once the judges were ready to go we moved on to round 4. Winds came up a bit but all in all the flying was great. After round 4 completed the pilots and crew headed off to get ready for the banquet.

The best of awards "none flying" were handed out along with the Harris Lee award. It seems I have made a huge mistake and select this year's recipient Mike Peck. I say mistake only as it seems Mike has received this award already. I have to follow this with Mike has done an over the top job helping Scale Masters stay alive and improve day by day. I can tell you from my chair, Mike is a world class model of what we need more have to grow and be successful in the future. I personally apologies to all of our members seeing this as a second Harris Lee award for Mike. In 2005 Earl Aune presented Mike Peck with a onetime award. Earl called this "The Harris Lee Life Time Achievement Award). This is different in my eyes from the standard Harris Lee Award. I have to point out that Mike is outstanding in the support of Scale Masters and to receive the Harris Lee award now is fitting. After the awards we auctioned up a Great Planes Giant Scale Corsair provided by Hobbico one of our many great sponsors.

Sunday's weather was outstanding, cool in the AM with light winds. We had one casualty while flying with the balance of the flights being uneventful. Round one was completed and off to the awards.

With this being the first time score normalization being used we have posted both raw (not normalized) and normalized standings. The normalized standings were used for the final standings. Please note we elected to normalize a 100 point score to 1000 for both flight and static in Advance, Team and Expert. The Open class static score was normalized to 300 points. This mean the person with the highest score in static will receive a 1000 point score for Advance, Team and advance and a 300 point score for Open. All flight scores also were normalized to a 1000 point score. The person with the highest score on each set of judges received a 1000 point score. I plan to publish a document on normalization in the next few weeks in our forum.

All in all, the entire event was a huge success. Thanks go out to all of our sponsors and helpers. Huge thanks goes out to Mitch Baker who never left his scoring chair.

Cheers,

Bernie Boland
USSMA National Chairman