2006 Kathy Jaffe Challenge : The Heat is On

Our 10am start on Sunday gives us only four hours to fly forty-eight pilots. Can we get a pilot through the box every five minutes? The Intermediate through Unlimited pilots will be flying unknowns. Unlikely. We try. Weather will not be a factor today. The entire Northeast and Mid-Atlantic will have few clouds for days. The only significant weather factor is heat, which is forecast to peak at 95F.

First priority is to get a second flight for the Primary and Sportsman competitors. John Nafziger is leading Primary with 454 points. Second and third are an honest tie with Randol Webb at 378 and Kurt Muller at 376. (There are 550 possible points in Primary).

Sportsman has a clear leader in Kirill Barsukov, who has 1059 points out of 1330 possible. His closest contender is Karen Greenfield, flying her Pitts S1C for 1019 points. Alan Troutman has 1010 points with his Rebel/Edge 540. We have one late arrival who will fly two flights today.

The freestyle flights were led by Jim Wells, Larry Bashore, and Bill Gordon in Intermediate. That puts Bill in the lead with Jim on his heels. At least five other pilots still have a shot at placing.

In Advanced, Sergey Prolayagev won the freestyle followed by Bill Finagin and Hans Bok. Bill got enough of a margin on Hans to surpass him in the standings.

Before calling the contest we got the Intermediate pilots to fly the first six figures of their unknown. We were unable to fly a third flight for Advanced and Unlimited. There simply wasn't time.

Two Intermediate pilots have now zeroed entire sequences by attempting to fly like Advanced pilots, violating the low altitude limit of the box for Intermediate. The penalty is hard to take; but, it's there to keep competitors safe. We're not soft on safety here at the Kathy Jaffe. These pilots had to take the hit.