December 15, 2002 dawned as a brisk morning with blue skies and a promise of fair weather for M.I.S.O.'s annual pot-luck barbecue and Fun-Fly. Members arrived with the usual punctuality that is the norm at all M.I.S.O. events...everyone was late. Still, attendance was fair with one face from the past. Steve Groff, who has had to suspend his flying activities, was on hand after an absence of many months. After watching the action for a few minutes he began muttering something about, "Man, I got the bug again...I gotta get a plane."
Al Battad arrived early (hey, anything before noon is early for Al) to handle the cooking chores. Tom Nakagawa brought rice and some excellent kalua turkey. His pop-up tent and table made for a great buffet line. Duane Asami donated soft-drinks, Portuguese sausages and marinated steaks. Nick Czar made some very tasty sushi. Others in attendance included Steve Wilcox, Lennie Lawrence and Randy Leval. Randy and Lennie have both flown r/c models in the past but quit and have only recently returned to the r/c ranks. Both are outstanding pilots.
The winds were extremely light and lift everyone knew that lift would be a transient at best. Only four members chose to enter the contest, everyone else seemed more interested in the barbecue and buffet line. Due to the light lift, the four members agreed to fly three-minute flights instead of the usual five-minute flights.
In Round 1, Tom Nakagawa, with his two-meter Omega, was forced to fly for so long scratching for lift to avoid landing out-of-bounds that the flight was a throw-out. His time score would have been a negative number. Greg Wick elected to stay tucked in closer to the launch slope but also found very little lift with his Climax and landed after only 2:05 for 85 points. Gerald Fukuoka and his Mini-Max 700 floated to a very respectable 3:01 and 17 point landing for a first round score of 195. Duane Asami was the only one to fly a larger plane and broke out his favorite Falcon 880. The Falcon, always a fine flyer, landed a bit short at 2:56 but made up nicely for it with a 23 point landing for a total of 199 points.
The Falcon didn't do so well in Round 2, scraping for lift for nearly ten minutes before barely making it's way back to the landing zone. As a face-saving measure, Duane put it down about 5 feet from the landing balloon. A nice landing on a throw-out flight. Greg's Climax was a victim in this round of light lift again as he was barely able to clear the fence and land at 1:06 with no landing points for 66 total points. Tom again had some trouble with getting back from the boonies and went over his time but hit an incredible 29 point landing to make up for his 3:12 time for a total of 185 points. Not one to be out-done, Gerald then skidded his Mini-Max in to a 29 point landing on a time of 2:59.53, which rounded to the nearest second to a perfect 3:00! His score of 209 for the round was the high score of the day.
In Round 3, Greg had to withdraw and attend to some family matters. Duane was victimized by light lift for the second time of the day and was only able to being his airplane home after a very long flight of 7:35. At minus 95 points, this would be his second throw-out score of the day. Gerald and Tom were also victims of the poor conditions, as Gerald landed outside the fence for his first throw-out score and Tom managed an 11 point landing but took so much time to find enough lift to set up his landing that his 3:58 flight would yield only a total of 75 points for his second throw-out flight for the day.
Everyone scored nice landing points after clawing their way to altitude. Gerald’s 26 point landing was somewhat negated by his time of 3:06 for a total score of only 194. Duane’s time of 3:05 was good for two less penalty points but his 21 point landing yielded the low score of the round at 191. Tom was off his time by only four seconds but four short is always better than four over so his time of 2:56 was the best of the window and his 25 point landing bonus gave him a very nice score of 201. At the end of Round 4, Gerald already knew that he had just about wrapped up the contest and probably wouldn’t be flying in Round 5.
Duane flew his fifth flight secure in the knowledge that only an absolutely perfect round would put him in the hunt for first or second. It didn’t happen and his time of 2:55 with no landing points yielded a whopping 175 points. This meant that even if Tom flew a perfect round for 210 points, he would be in second and Gerald was already the winner. Still, Tom tossed out his plane and posted a very respectable time of 2:58 with 19 landing points for a total of 197. A fine flight in deed.
The final standings showed Gerald "Ace" Fukuoka the winner with a total score of 598 out of a possible 630. Tom "Galanto" Nakagawa copped second with a very respectable 583 points leaving Duane "The Kid" Asami a distant third with 565 points. Still, it was a fine effort by all and most important of all, everyone score very high on the fun-factor scale.
The rest of the day after the contest was spent in just enjoying the camaraderie, the weather, the flying and the wonder flying conditions. Even though the lift was light during mid-day, by evening it had returned and the use of Randy’s new high-start made for some great flying.
