Rob Glover took the first day, Glauco Lago the second and the overall (both days) to win his first OVSS contest.

Photos, scores and flight reports on the 2007 Mid-American Soaring Championships page.

TRAVEL UPDATE: River Road will be shut down to LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY on SUNDAY. More info on the Mid-Am Champs page!

For the first time in it’s 30-plus years, the Mid-Am Champs is coming to Louisville. Normally held in Lexington, the BSS Club has given us the opportunity to host this storied competition. We’re making a slight change, though - this year the Mid-Am Champs will be fully man-on-man, just like the rest of the Ohio Valley Soaring Series (OVSS) competitions. Don’t know what “man-on-man” competition is? Check out this: Basic Guidelines for True Seeded Man-on-Man competition.

We’ll be holding this year’s Mid-Am at the site of last year’s Mid-South Soaring Champs - beautiful Hays-Kennedy Park in northeast Louisville, right by the river.

RES on Friday and then two days of Unlimited on Saturday and Sunday. All the info you’ll need is here:

2007 Mid-Am Soaring Championship

That’s right, folks! It’s time for the 2007 AMA/LSF Soaring Nationals in beautiful Muncie, IN at the AMA Headquarters. There are 4 pilots from Louisville competing in this week-long marathon of RC Soaring! Handlaunch is Sunday, along with Nostalgia. Rudder/Elevator/Spoiler (RES) is Monday, 2-meter is Tuesday and Wednesday, Unlimited is Thursday and Friday and F3J is Saturday and Sunday.

Ben Wilson is covering the Soaring NATS for the AMA’s NATSNews daily publication.

View our 2007 NATS Photos (updated daily, hopefully!)

Live(ish) updates on RCGroups: The Road to the 2007 NATS

Update: Ryan Woebkenberg has made a report on the NOS NATS: 2007 Nostalgia Nationals.

Update: Unlimited Final Scores. F3J Preliminary and Final Scores.

Bruce Davidson has grabbed a bunch of guys from around the region and we are going to have a Handlaunch (F3K) contest this Sunday, July 1 around noon at Charlie Vettiner Park - be there, or by a winch-monger!

The first 2007 LASS Club Contest is in the bag! Gordy Stahl was the CD and we did 4 rounds. 1st round was a warmup and then the remaining rounds were an 18-minute add-em-up with an 8 minute max per round.

In the end, Ben Wilson was victorious by a hair over Tony Utley and Bruce Davidson. We had 8 guys show up to compete, and we’ll be adding more dates (hopefully one every two weeks) very soon.

You can check out the contests section of the site to take a look our club contests results and the new 2007 Mid-American Championship contest that we’ll be hosting in August.

It’s been a while since I have submitted something for the LASS web site. Ben has done such a good job I have been letting him do most of the work. Thanks Ben!

As a way of catching up let me start with some of the more recent activities and go backwards in time. As of today (11/26/06) our own Gordy has completed his LSF level 5 contest wins. The well traveled Gordy got both of his last two wins flying in the Tangerine soaring contest in Florida over Thanksgiving weekend. He took first both days flying in unlimited class. Congratulations go out to Gordy for completing what is to most people the hardest task toward achieving Level 5.

Gordy got his wins the same weekend the rest of the club stayed home and flew in the dark in our annual “UFOs over J-Town”. We had seven pilots meet in the dark at Vettner. Three pilots were from the Lexington club just to prove the Louisville guys are not the only ones that are a little unscrewed at the socket.
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LASS members Bruce Davidson and Ken Marks represented Louisville at the East Coast Handlaunch Glider Festival in Wilson, NC from October 20-22. The brand-new XP-5 DLG from Polecat Aero was unveiled, and Ken and Bruce had a grand old time.

In the end, Bruce placed 3rd and Ken was 14th out of 24

Results are here, pictures are here, and you can read all the war-stories you want over at RCGroups!

We had a decent crew of pilots (Ed, Tony, Ben, Gordy) at the inaugural World Soaring Masters this past September. It was an amazing 4 days of soaring, and LASS member Ben Wilson captured his thoughts into day-by-day reports, and even had round-by-round reports of the 6-round finals at the end of day four. Those reports have been compiled by Bill & Bunny Kuhlman into the November 2006 issue of the RC Soaring Digest. You can more issues of the RCSD here: RCSoaringDigest.com.

Local boy Bruce Davidson recently competed in one of Europe’s largest handlaunch glider contests in Laucha, Germany - about 2 hours south of Berlin. Over 80 competitors from a dozen countries were involved. Bruce, along with US handlaunch hot-shot Phil Barnes travelled to Germany to represent the United States. Bruce ended up 13th in the preliminaries, with Phil in 3rd. Bruce missed the cutoff by just a hair, as only the top 12 pilots proceed to the final fly-offs. Phil ended up in 11th place.

The competition was of a very high level compared to our US competitions, and you can read Phil and Bruce’s reports of the contest here at RCGroups: German Championship F3K @ RCGroups.

We’re very proud of our teammate and are glad he was able to represent the US well!

Photo courtesy of Arne Asper

Another year, another NATS. This year, the LASS crew were represented in every event except for cross-country and F3B. Bruce Davidson landed 2nd place in the Handlaunch Event, Gordy Stahl ended up 12 out of 84 in the Unlimited Event, and Ed Wilson took 6th place in the RES event.

Some very good placings for this National Competition, but the “big” winner here might as well be our junior pilot, Lee Atchison. He flew in his first-ever NATS in the 2-meter, Unlimited and RES competitions. So impressed with his dedicated and excitement to soaring were the LSF brass that they decided to award him the 2006 LSF “Spirit of Soaring” Award. Marc Gellart presented Lee this award, and gave a very nice speech giving the entire LASS team a big “attaboy”! Both Lee and his big brother MJ both volunteered for “Turnaround Troll” duties and helped out quite a bit shagging chutes all day long. Mom Reba was also in attendance to see her kiddos getting the whole soaring experience.

NATS Galleries:

2006.07.26 - NATS Unlimited and RES

2006.07.22 - NATS Cross-country

2006.07.21 - NATS Handlaunch