Monday was the first day of competition. It was pretty windy most of the day, winds of 10 mph or more. The big news today was the US Junior S8D team.  Alyssa Stenberg took the Silver medal!

She maxed out (three 6 minute flights) and made the fly-offs against a Russian flier. Unfortunately she had a misfire in the flyoff and the FAI rules only allow one "attempt" for a fly-off flight. But she took it well, since she had the Sivler guaranteed regardless.   Alyssa had already made a sacrifice to earn a medal. Ging into round 3, she had 2 maxes. She needed to get another 6 minute max to make the flyoffs. She made a good boost, and into a thermal. It was too windy to try to "pilot" the model in the thermal, so she triummed them odle to glide by itself and let it go on iots own in the thermal. By the time it maxe,d it was to ofar away to see to control it. It eventually lost signal and flew by itself, landing very very far away, and was lost.

Given the choice: "Model or medal?", Alyssa had chosen to risk losing the model to get a medal.

The rest of the Junior team had to scratch and claw for good scores in the wind.. Matthew Berk came up short of a max on two flights, but they were solid flights. And Craig Vinyard shook off a DQ'ed boost to get in two flights  of nearly 5 minutes.  This combined team effort earned the Junior team a GOLD MEDAL!

The US Senior team flew S8E-P in the afternoon. Ryan  Woebkenberg, Kevin Kuczek, and myself. We got in 9 "solid" flights, but came up short of our goal for a team medal. You can see the scores for the first three rounds. But I do not have scores/results  for the S8E-P fly-off (4th)  round where the top 5 flew against each other, as that was held just before the medal ceremonies

The other event held today was S6A Streamer Duration. I was so busy checking out JR S8D in the morning, and flying S8E/P in the afternoon, that I did not get to see or photograph much of S6.  You will have to check the photos of the printed results.

I am so dead tired and beat, that I need to cut this short so I can upload some photos and this report to Chris.

- George Gassaway