14/09/2001 Final Day One, Two rounds of Schedule B

Today was what most were waiting for, the first two rounds of final.  In the preliminaries, Curtis Youngblood scored the top 1,000, with Hashimoto finished a near second at 989.2335, Dobashi, Kobayashi and Scott Gray closing in with scores at 978.0641, 977.4128, and 971.7124 respectively, the competition amongst the top five position would be tight.   Today's flying would be judged by a panel of 10 judges instead of the usual 5, due o the new two flight line schedule being implemented this year.  Raw scores would be calculated by dropping the highest and the lowest 2 scores of the 10 judges, and add them up.  There was 2 rounds of flying today, divided by 14 flights in the morning for the first round, and the second 14 rounds for the second round after lunch.

Flying started around 8:00am, with very gusty winds blowing perpendicular, direct towards the pilot and the flight line, and adding the cool weather made flying very very hard.  In the morning round, all pilots had to fight the wind very much during hovering, and its a usual scene to see helicopters flying to the upwind that did not have much speed.  This was the ultimate test to the pilots and their machines.  In the morning round, Kobayashi did an almost perfect flight, but during autorotation the tail of his helicopter suddenly lost rotation, so he had to stretch the auto a bit, which was penalized, but still he got the top score of 1,000.   As I saw Curtis Youngblood's flight had to fight very hard to hover his Vigor during hovering maneuvers, the aerobatics were off centered, and in the exit of the 540 degree stall turn with half roll he exited so low in the deck.  During Curtis' flight exclamations were usual by the spectators, and in fact after he finished his flight he did not even stop to pose for pictures.  He must be unhappy about his performance, but even with this performance Curtis tied with Kobayashi in this round for a top score of 1,000.  Scott Gray did marvelous, and everything he did was almost right on, but he did not score very high.  Dobashi did a marvelous flight too, but he was being penalized in the hovering and some off centered aerobatics, and so did Cliff Hiatt, Wayne Mann, Mark Christy, Hashimoto and Sensui.  As a result, the first round ended with both Kobayashi and Curtis tied on the top.  Curtis' road to World Championship this time was near, due to the fact that he now had two 1,000 points in his hands.

Afternoon flight started in 1:00pm, with very gusty winds from right to left of the flight line, and with a warmer air temperature.  Dobashi did a text book flight in the afternoon that enabled him to score 1,000, that catapult him to second place overall.  In fact, during his flight, applause were common by the spectators, and once Dobashi turned his head and smile to the spectators, all while his Caliber was approaching a stall turn!  Kobayashi did marvelous, but he could not top Dobashi's, and ranked third overall.  Hashimoto's final flights today were not his usual impressive, and that cost him a drop of overall ranking from second in the preliminary to fourth overall.  Cliff Hiatt was a happy man after this flight that moved his ranking from the seventh to the sixth place overall.  Wayne was off a bit in the afternoon, that resulted him a nineth position overall.  Curtis flight was much better than in the morning, and this time he did pose for pictures, but his flight this time was not good enough in score compared to Dobashi's, and still he remained at the top with 2,000.  Sensui did good in the second final flight that catapulted him from overall ranking of eight in the preliminary to fifth overall.

After both rounds, the ranking of the finalists were as follows:

Looking at the scores, there will be four contenders that could claim World Champion title this year.  Although Curtis had 2,000 in his hands, he was followed closely by Dobashi and Kobayashi, who were only 22 and 23 points behind Curtis.  Hashimoto's chance to re-claim World Championship title would be slim at 48 points behind, but its not impossible.  Due to the normalized score system, a difference of a few raw scores would be magnified to two or three times difference in normalized score, so if Curtis could not get 1,000 tomorrow, a last minute win by either Dobashi, Kobayashi and Hashimoto were not impossible.  An American slag that best describe the situation says "It ain't over till the fat lady sings" !

Panel of 10 judges for the final	Windsock showing how bad wind was
Sensui after first final flight	Kobayashi from the start box
Kobayashi scored 1,000 for this round	A happy Kobayashi
Cliff Hiatt hovering his X-Cell	Cliff Hiatt & David Harkey
Scott Gray hovering in the start box	Scott Gray's JR Vigor in the start box
Mark Christy after first round	Wayne Mann hovering in start box
Wayne Mann hovering his Caliber	Wayne Mann with David Harkey and Dave Sellers
Dobashi hovering in start box	Dobashi with Takayanagi
Hashimoto hovering in start box	Hashimoto hovering his Freya EX
Hashimoto and Tanaka	Scott Gray prepared for his second round
Curtis getting his JR Vigors fuel up	Curtis hovering his JR Vigor
A happier Curtis after second round	Sensui after second final flight

Anyway, tomorrow we'll see who end up as the World Champion this time.  Stay tuned!

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