Arizona Combat clinic   

2008 Arizona combat clinic turned out to be a great event with well over 20 pilots attending from Canada, Mexico, Texas, California, Michigan, Washington, Minnesota, Arkansas, and of course Arizona.   Josh Ellison & MIKE arrived on Friday evening and met up with Rocky Johnny & Lucky from San Diego along with Leo Tequillia Silva.

    

Friday evening was spent putting planes together and getting unpacked.   Then Saturday it was off the races.  Weather was perfect with a slight breeze, full sun, and 80 degree temperatures.  Fuel was supplied and the streamers were the new eco friendly forestry tape.   The string seemed to be a little week but the actual streamer part worked great.   Circle were very nicely marked and a handful of fouls were passed out for viloations.     Lots of great flying along with great times all weekend.

Greg HIll probably flew more matches than anyone there.  He started out flying 3 times against Pat Makenzie just to get of the first round.   The Canadians looked good with both Ivan and Brad Lapoint doing some early damage.  The Canadians are a class act and always bring a strong team using a combination of good flying, good equipment, good strategy, and solid pitting. 

Brad said he hadn’t been flying this good since he could remember and is threatening to fly at the 2010 World Champs in Hungary.  He said f2d has become enjoyable again and thanks his new Evil Emo planes for that.    Dave Edwards has hit several contests this year including a world cup in Sebnitz, Germany. Dave was in Arizona this past weekend and flying some nicely home built homemade planes.   There was lots of great equipment including a variety of motors. 

 

Josh Ellision made the journey from Dallas and was sporting his new pit boxes that he is selling.   He made a really nice custom mini box for Mike.  This box is small and great for traveling to contest.  Its small enough that it can easily be packed in your suit case.  

Phil Granderson came back to fly f2d after a long lay off.  He said he spent $2000 and now has some top of the line equipment and is ready to go.   Phil comes from near the San Francisco area and doesn’t have many people to fly with or much of a good flying site up there so he likes to come down to LA to fly with that  Crew. 

Ken Birddick and Jeff Rein made the journey to represent the Seattle area.   These guys have been getting pretty serious about f2d and have been really active up in there area.    They had their profis really running strong!   Bobby Mears flew in on a private plane from Lubbock.  Bobby was running his shut off not sure exactly how they worked for him, but from far they looked to be cutting out on him at the top of the circle and up wind.   Gotta give Bobby credit for sticking with them and trying to find a solution for the new 2009 rule.  Chuck Rudner was also using a shut off that he has been modifying to try and meet the rule requirements.   Chuck’s is a swing arm type that he first designed for fast combat.   Chuck had a cut away and his shut off appeared to fail.   The plane did not go very far so it was hard to say if it had a chance to arm or not. 

So threw out the weekend there was still alot of discussion about whats in store for 2009 and how is the shut off rule going to impact the sport.   Over all the weekend turned out to be a great event and there were really some spectacular matches.  The later part of Sunday afternoon saw some great flying from guys like Josh Ellision, Darin Albert, Bill MaywaldShutoff, Leonardo Silva, Greg Hill, and Mike Willcox.   In the end of Leonardo Silva with his Evil Emo Creation planes with FORAs taking the 3rd place spot.    Greg Hill was flying some older Yuvenko models with a combination of Fora and AKMs taking 2nd.    Mike Willcox was flying his own design Evil Emo Creation planes powered by profis taking 1st.     Special thanks to the guys from Phoenix for hosting this event and doing a fine job of running it.