Out of the thirty-four pre-registered pilots twenty-four braved the forecast and showed up on Saturday and twenty-six on Sunday. The weather was a major concern as the forecast was for remnants of a tropical storm to crawl through the area. Up until Friday night the forecast was for rain all weekend. But Saturday morning the low pressure had drifted further south. Seems the sacrificing of the chicken Friday night might have had some effect. Jokingly I had sent out confirmation emails promising good weather by the beginning of the contest. Phil noted this so on the chalk board Saturday morning writing that had I said the drizzle was to stop by 9:30am. As it was I had to sneak in and change the time several times but by 10 am the contest was under way. During the wait we were inspired watching Phil and Andrew Swan while testing their ship's get some early light lift under such cloudy, drizzly conditions. It was good to see Oleg Golovidov from North Carolina and Denny Maize, Bill Grenoble and the boys from PA show up along with a good showing from the BASS contingency.

We decided after the ladder round to go with eight one-minute flights due to the light lift. About halfway through the contest we switched to four two-minute flights. About mid afternoon probably some 200 hawks were in balled up a thermal. We all mentioned seeing them in great numbers in columns in the fall but they were in this ball formation probably because of the light lift and overcast skies. It was an impressive site. The last round of the day was dedicated to Oleg and at his request we went with a 1, 2, 3, and 4 minute flight task. And as I recall he got his time won the round and buried us even deeper winning the contest for the day.

At the end of Saturdays contest eight of us participated in an impromptu F3B hand launch contest organized by Jason Werner, Thomas Kiesling and Luke Waters. It was fun and something that we could consider for future contest.

Sunday appeared to be a better day but at Gude a NW breeze usually means difficult time finding lift accessible to hand launches. The wind comes over the small slope from the NW and then tumbles down to the lowest part of the field at the SE corner. If you are brave and skilled enough you can fly further down wind and catch some lift breaking off form the tree line which is exactly what Oleg did to great success to win the contest on Sunday. Oleg also took the two day grand champion award.

Each day ended with a Logic raffle donated by Phil Barnes. Rick brown and Bert Magin were the winners of the Logic’s. At the end of Sundays contest a fifty-dollar gift certificate donated by FMA was given away at the raffle and Denny Maize of Polecat Aeroplane Works generously donated a X-terminator fuse to the raffle.

The big story second to the weather was Oleg's dominance of the contests and winning booth days made him the two day grand champion. Phil Barnes was awarded the second CASA/BASS/BAR-CCS triad trophy beating out last year’s winner Russ Bennett.

Thanks to all who make this another successful CASA contest. Special thanks to Rodney Armstead for doing the scoring, and Ted Lindstat for registering folks, keeping the round times and as always blowing his horn.