By Dan G.
MVSA Webmaster
Awards for the 2021 season were announced in a club meeting held on Zoom and distributed at the “Frozen Fingers” fun fly held last Friday. – Seventeen flyers competed in five classes (Unlimited, RES, ALES, 2-Meter and Hand Launch) at monthly contests from March to November at two private fields in O’Fallon, MO.
We would finish the 9-month season with 8-TD contests (April was cancelled due to weather) and 8 Hand Launch contests (July was cancelled due to weather). A total of thirty-three rounds of 1-hour each were flown in the Thermal Duration contests. The Thermal Duration contests consisted of Unlimited, RES, 2-Meter and ALES. A small group of flyers managed to get all four classes completed in the hour span.
Before we get to the class stories, much is said about landing and their relative importance. In a class where landing’s are most important here is the tale of a contest battle. In July, Larry A. flew for 18 minutes, 6 seconds – just 76 seconds longer than the Bill C.. While Larry led on time, Bill led on landings with a 71-point advantage (275-201). In the end, time would win but 3.88 normalized points – that is 3.88 out of 1,000 possible. Larry won but Bill C. would take home 996.12 normalized points. It would be the tightest 2-meter victory of the season.
On November 14th, the day after the final contest of 2021, our web team met and asked a question – how can we describe the 2021 season? With few notes (since we were competing) we decided the best way to answer the question was to recreate the season with the data we had – all the numbers we could get our hands on. We downloaded all of round by round scores and began to built a statistical snapshot of the 2021 season. We will make the full Excel sheet. The sheet is kind of messy but can be viewed here and the file can be downloaded and used in Excel. View the spreadsheet here.
Unlimited was the largest class with an average of 5.9 flyers per contest. The class flew for 18 hours, 42 minutes, 26 seconds. The battle for the class title came down to landings. Not exactly. Each flyer won 4 contests. Wayne’s next best 2 contests were enough to secure the title. According to times and landings – the title was much closer. Wayne for a total of 3 hours, 28 minutes, 48 seconds. This was just 36 seconds longer than Bob. Bob would win the landings with a season total of 1,726 to Wayne’s 1,561. The title would come down to gaining the normalized points for each contest. The best landing flyer in Unlimited was Dan G. with a total of 1,726 points and a best day average of 84.25 in July.
Unlimited: Wayne for a total of 3 hours, 28 minutes, 48 seconds. This was just 36 seconds longer than Bob, who would win the landings with a season total of 1,726 to Wayne’s 1,561. The title would come down to gaining the normalized points for each contest.
Hand Launch was the 2nd largest class with an average of 5.4 flyers per contest. The last 2 contests of the year saw 7 flyers each. The class was dominated by Wayne who won every contest. Dave Q. finished 2nd and Robert S. brought home 3rd place.
RES was 3rd largest class with 4.6 flyers per contest. RES flew for a total of 13 hours and 26 minutes. The largest contest for the class was in October when 8 flyers flew 4 rounds for a total of 2 hours and 40 minutes of total flight time. The best landing performance in RES was by Bob G. in with an average score of 92.75 points.
The ALES class averaged 3.75 flyers per contest. Wayne W. would grab the class title leaving just 1.9 normalized points on the table going to Larry A. in March. He would take home wins for 5 of the 8 contests of the season. Larry A. followed with 3 wins and trailed at the end of the season by 497.84 points.
2-Meter averaged 2.85 / contest. Largest contest was in July with 5 flyers. Dan G. took the first contest. Bob G. dominated the next 3. Larry A. Stepped into the ring for wins in July and August. His July win would be the tightest win of the season by just shy of 4 normalized points. Bill O. took over the last three contests finishing just shy 94.53 points of Bob G. for the class title. Bob G. also took home the unofficial title of best landing average in a contest for 2-Meter with 88.25 points in July.