Event

The RC Scale Nats is scheduled for Thursday, July 10 through Sunday, July 13 this year.

Thursday was Unofficial Navy Carrier Events day. It was also the last day of Navy Carrier flying at the 2025 AMA Nationals.

We flew A Speed, B Speed, and Sport Jet Speed. Yes, that was us making all that noise over on Site 2. A Speed is flown using a .15 cubic inch motor. B Speed is flown using up to a .29 cubic inch motor. There were a total of five entries in Sport Jet. We had five entries in B Speed and four entries in A Speed.

Today’s event was AMA Speed Limit Combat. Twenty-five contestants flew a highly  competitive event with a twist of a limited speed. Sounds easy, right?  Well, detuning a combat plane to not exceed 75mph is tougher than one might think.

On day 3 of the Control Line Speed Nats, we flew Formula 40 Speed, 21 Profile Proto Speed, and Fox 35 Stunt Speed. There were a total of four flyers in 21 Proto, three entered Formula 40, and 11 flew Fox 35 Speed.

Today we flew the AMA Fast 2D class. It was another great day of combat! There were several really good matches, and several poor ones. There were pilots from all over the USA and we had zero altercations or complaints.

On Wednesday, the contestants were greeted with cloudy skies, light winds and mid to upper 60s for temperatures. The winds, once the official flights started, stayed in one direction. So in the words of Sergeant Shultz from Hogan's Heroes, the day was Be-u-ti-ful!

The final day of flying began again at 8:00am. Unfortunately, the fog was way too dense to begin flying on time, but it did not take long to burn off. I was elected to test the ceiling height with one of my models and we got started about 30 minutes later.

There are multiple Control Line (CL) events at the Nationals. They all share a bellcrank to control the elevator and fly in a circular pattern. But each CL event is very different in its purpose. The goal in a CL Scale event is to build a smaller version of a full-size aircraft in appearance and flight qualities.