Crews and their pilots at the Logan 15m Nationals

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I’m normally crewless (and clueless) at regional competitions, but I try to have a crew at nationals.  Having a crew makes a huge psychological difference, especially in a physically demanding contest like this one has become.  This year I was fortunate to have a great crew here in the person of Mark Hawkins (of Hawke Tracking SPOT map fame).  Mark and I have had a lot of fun here watching different crews interact with their pilots, and I thought it would be fun to share our observations ;-).

  • Mark Hawkins/Frank Paynter (TA):  This was the first time the micro castle’s population went from 1 to 2, and that in itself was an adventure.  It actually worked out surprisingly well, mostly due to the fact that Mark can fit in an “A” fuselage ;-).   Mark observed a wide range of emotional states on the part of his pilot, ranging from abject misery on the landout days to ‘bouncing off the walls’ on the good.  Later in the contest we christened this the ‘TA excitability scale’ and Mark would score me each day after I landed.
  • Blair/Dave Mockler (2xx):  Blair is Dave’s daughter, and was known around the airport as ‘the glider babe’.  She ably handled all the normal crew duties, including the 3-state retrieve on Day 7.  “The best crew I’ve ever had” says Dave.  Not bad for a 17-year old, ‘glider babe’ or otherwise.
  • Steve Bott/Bruno Vassel (B4): Bruno had his share of long landouts (see the videos on YouTube), including one in a plowed field in a small valley near Sherman Peak.  Steve always had a smile on his face no matter what was going on, and no matter how far he had to go to pull Bruno out of a field.  On the evening of the 2nd mass landout we ran across Steve stopped on the side of the road near Preston puzzling over a brand-new Garmin Nuvi, trying to figure out how to get to Bruno.  This was his 3rd GPS model as the previous two had been giving him obviously wrong guidance.
  • Dotty/Francois Pin (FP): An wonderful example of life-long crew/pilot training and interaction, Dotty obviously has worked her magic over the years using the pilot-motivation-by-major-life-event method.  Not only did Francois make the CORRECT decision to not landout and get back to Logan on time for their 25th wedding anniversary dinner, but he did so and still won the day.  Sounds like proper pilot training to me.
  • Dave Ridding/Tim Welles (W3):  This was one of the more interesting crew/pilot combinations – Dave is the creator of the patented “Heineken Method” of pilot training, and Tim is an expert in being untrainable ;-).  For those of you who are new to the Heineken Method, the idea is simple.  The pilot is rewarded for good behavior with a Heineken, and punished for bad behavior by withholding same.  For instance, on the 3rd (and hopefully last) mass landout day W3 was with me at Afton, Wyoming   (2.5hrs one-way from Logan).  The telephone call to his crew went something like this:
    • W3:  “Hey Dave, I’ve landed out at Afton Wyoming – can you come get me?”.
    • Dave: “Heineken!!”.
    • W3: “Oh, right – I’ll get an aerotow”

The Heineken method is very similar to the very successful ‘positive reinforcement’ method used for training dogs, except a little more challenging because dogs are generally smarter than pilots ;-).

  • Christine/Nick Bonniere (ST):  Christine and Nick are obviously a close-knit couple, and Christine is a dedicated, hard-working crew.  She is there every morning helping Nick get assembled, ballasted up and on the grid, and she is there every evening with tail dolly and wing wheel ready for his return.  Yesterday when Nick landed and Christine wasn’t right there ready for him, she was plainly a bit perturbed that she might be failing in her crewly duties ;-).
  • Maria/Jerzy Szemplinski (XG):  Another Canadian team and another dedicated husband & wife team.  Maria doesn’t talk a whole lot, but always has a ready smile at the morning meetings, and a pleasure to talk with.
  • Rosalie/Austin/Sophia/Forrest/Mark Keene(7K aka KS): The Keene Team is an entire cheering section helping him at this contest.  Rosalie rides herd on the kids during the day, but they all work very hard on the line during the launch.  The kids also regard Mark as a handy jungle gym whenever he is stationary ;-).
There are of course many other crew/pilot combinations here, so my apologies to those I have not mentioned specifically.  In addition there was another entire group responsible for pulling Dennis Linnekin (DL) out whatever hay field he picked each day.  That’s another story entirely, but lets just say that Dennis bought a lot of dinners at this contest. ;-).
TA