Good to hear from you, still into IMAC I see. The meet down in Tucson is set by DA I belive. A friend of mine was very heavily into it and we were getting prepared to retire we were going to get together and he was going build a plane with me and help through the first stages of IMAC. But unfortunately just as he was going to retire he went down to the Tucson to fly in the meet, got really sick from some kind of bug or something that bit him and 6 mouths later he passed away .
I am into this 3D stuff right now spent all of last season and the season before trying to teach my self to do it. It’s hard teaching an old dog new tricks but I am not giving up. Been changing my aeroplanes to meet all the demands for 3D. Bigger engines and removing weight as much as possible trying to achieve this magical number of 8.5 WCL. Rebuild three planes and have been able to get them down to 8.4 to 9.0 so we will see how it all fly’s this coming season.
Snoopy sorry to hear about your friend that passed away there is alot of info that can be gain just by attennting an event will TAS and im sure you could have picked up alot from his knowledge .
Like you said this iMac flying is like "teaching an old dog new tricks " i can agree this statment fully, as i have started into this slippery slope of getting my practise in so I can fly in Sportman level this year . We have one event in my backyard and a couple in Washington that I would like to attended more but they are conflicting with my boys school exams and the worlds in Munich is on at the end of June.I have read that team Canada will have four pilots from the Calgary area competing for Canada there.
I know you went to triple tree last year so saw the guys fly and those pilots like Spencer, Jase , Kimm an other pilots also compete at TAS in Tucson 17' and you can ask them questions about thier planes and style of flying . The most excieting and eventful part of TAS was when they started flying freestyle, you will never see pilots just hang it all out trying to get high scores and i witnessed three wrecks on the first half day of flying . One of them got too low and catch the signs that were posted in the field Kim Q and Aron Garle from Australia just ran out of air and contacted the ground while Santi was just starting his flight when his plane froze and went into the ground at half throttle, total loss . It looked like a bird or something hit his canopy and caused the crash , you can see it in the video . This was like i said was day one of freestyle i had to leave to catch my flight home but the boys were laying it all out for the Sat and Sundays flights with a couple more accidents that occurred on Sat and Sunday . You would have loved seeing these plane fly to the music each pilot selected for each round . Kim's plane was rebuilt with help from Bruno , Santi, Matt and Sharaud and other pilotswho helped rebuild the wing tip and aileron and then the planes was shared between Santi and Kim for the next two days , never amazing ...
So if you want to witness the best pilots flying and competing very friendly but flying thier hearts out then plan on going and witnessing how iMac and freestyle flying is all about . Like you i'm an older dog tring to fly like these Kids do but realize that my reactions and eye sight isn't what it was in my teens and twenty when my dad and i raced competitively in pylon.
I wish i could compete as well as pilot like Jase and Spencer and others but maybe if it was 30 years ago i probable could have but these new pilots have such good finger to eye reaction, it is incrediable to witness and plane fly in such a manner that. Guess all that gaming has really honed everyone skills to a fine point that today flying iMac and Freestyle is for the youth .