Scale masters championship: Duel in the desert

Model Airplane News, Jun 2003 by Nelson, Jerry

The 23rd annual U.S. Scale Masters Championship was held at the Arizona Model Aviators R/C club's excellent Superstition Airpark in Mesa (near Phoenix), AZ. The Scale Masters is truly one of the premier RC competitions, and what makes it so prestigious is the contestant-selection process. A series of 22 qualifying competitions was held in the USA, Puerto Rico and Canada, and the top 30 percent of the contestants were eligible to participate in the Championship. More than 100 modelers qualified, and 57 trekked to Mesa to compete.

The Arizona Model Aviators club members ran a very well-organized and professional event. The club also secured two new sponsors-Boeing and Southwest Airlines. It is great that these companies are taking an interest in RC modeling. Weather was fine for the entire competition; neither wind nor heat was a concern, and all five scheduled rounds were flown.

THE RULES

The Scale Masters competition has two classes: Expert and Team Scale. In Expert, the builder and flier are the same person, whereas Team Scale is set up so the builder can have someone else fly the model for him. This year, there were 45 entrants in Expert and 12 in Team Scale.

The competition consists of two programs: the static judging scores the workmanship and scale accuracy of the model, and it is followed by the flight performance. Numerous individual items are judged on a zero-to-10 scale for a possible score of 100 points for each program. This gives a maximum possible score of 200 points-100 for the static score and 100 for the average of the best three flights.

The static judging is done the day before the flying, and this year it took place at the Champlin Fighter Museum-a wonderful setting for displaying all the contestants' models. The static score is divided into three primary categories: accuracy of outline, color and markings and craftsmanship. The judging is a time-consuming process; the judges take their time to get it right, and scoring the 57 airplanes lasted all day. An interesting detail in the rules is that the static scores are not posted until after the first round of competition flying.

The flight score consists of a series of two required and seven optional maneuvers and flight realism. A figure-8 and an inspection pass compose the required maneuvers, and the other seven can be anything the pilot chooses, as long as the maneuvers can be judged accurately and are typical of those that the full-scale aircraft would perform. Piper Cubs do gentle turns and perhaps a spin or a loop; aerobatic aircraft do loops, snaps and rolls; bombers drop bombs. Common maneuvers performed by pilots are touch-and-go's, go-arounds and low-speed flybys with gear and flaps down. Takeoff and landing is not necessarily a judged maneuver, but many pilots choose it for judging.

The realism of flight is scored from zero to 10. Factors to consider are the impression of scale airspeed, rate of climb and descent, selection of flight maneuvers and takeoff and landing characteristics.

Winning scores from the two programs are usually in the range of 190 to 195 points; this year's winning Expert score was 192.083 by Kent Walters for his truly outstanding SBD-3 Douglas Dauntless.

HIGHLIGHTS

When the dust settled, Kent Walters and his Dauntless took home the top prize, but many other impressive aircraft gave Kent's Dauntless a run for the top spot.

Ramon Torres Sr. was second in Expert with his 1/5-scale, 91-inch Beechcraft Baron Twin. With two YS63 4-stroke engines, it weighed 20 pounds and was covered in lightweight fiber-glass and finished in Nelson Hobby U.S. Army white and olive-drab paint. Ramon's flight performance was impressive-as was the sound of those two 4-stroke twins!

First place in Team Scale went to the father-and-son team of Ramon Torres Sr. and 15-year-old Ramon Jr. Ramon Jr. flew his dad's beautiful Beechcraft T34-C and earned the best average Team Scale flight score of 91.250 points (sixth best overall!). The Torres team's aircraft was Ramon Sr.'s own design-a 1/5-scale model with an 80-inch wingspan that weighs 20 pounds. It's powered by a YS140 engine and uses Futaba radio gear with 10 servos. The finish is fiberglass covered with Nelson Hobby paint in an interesting desert-tan camouflage.

In second place were Eduardo Esteves and Ronaldo Salles from Brazil with their entry-Spacewalker-which had earned them first place in 2001. It is a highly detailed 1/3-scale kit with a Precision Eagle 3.2 engine, and it's finished in Coverite dressed with enamel.

THE FUTURE

At the banquet held at the Champlin Fighter Museum, Earl Aune-the chairman of the Scale Masters Association (SMA)-gave an interesting report on its status and future, concentrating on ideas to encourage participation in the sport. Given the explosive growth in ARF popularity in recent years, he advocated promoting the participation of ARFs in the Sportsman scale class at Scale Masters qualifiers. The Sportsman scale event does not have a "builder" rule, so ARFs are perfectly acceptable. Promoting ARFs would increase the turnout at the local level, and perhaps some of those who participate with ARFs will, in time, build their own models and then fly them in the higher levels of competition.