Nats Rules
By Mike Hughes
District Eight
This year Nationals was going to be
another one of those large turnout races
that have been held at Legg Lake. So I
had been looking forward to having a
great time with my boats and friends. I
ended up running 13 classes. I had a
good shot with about half of them
coming home with hardware and maybe
a national title or two. Well this was at
least the plan. By mid week I had
maybe 8 of 32 possible finishes.
Needless to say I was pretty depressed. I
just wanted to play with my boats.
Wednesday was an off day for me. I
was able to sit and relax. I had made a
rule for myself over the last few years
because I was coming home exhausted
from racing boats at our local district
races. It was a simple rule: SIT MORE!
That was rule number one. By following
that simple rule I was having more fun at
the races because I was less grumpy. On
that Wednesday I came up with my
second rule: FINISH! Did not matter
where, first or last, just as long as the
boat came back to the beach. You can't
have any fun playing boats with it dead
on the water. From that day on I ended
up with 14 of 20 finishes. I had so much
fun the last couple of days. It did not
even bother me that much when I ran out
of fuel on my last lap of A Mod Tunnel.
All I needed for the championship was a
finish. Ended up fifth overall with the A
Mod, but it did not matter - I was having
fun.
So the next time you feel yourself
getting down on your racing, take a step
back and follow the two rules.
PROPWASH
4
October 2011
The Conversation
(Continued from page 3)
two qualifying FE classes to run and we had good attendance from the FE contingent.
There were several IC (Internal Combustion) guys running electric and enjoying it.
David
: Ouch on the Two-For-One. More bondo, eh? We've been having a great
time hosting the Arizona Winter Warmups race every year. We'll be holding our 8th
event in late February, 2012 and we’ve done a fine job maintaining what our event is
all about: good friends getting together for some very enjoyable racing. It’s the “feel
good” FE event of the year, kind of like the band Len’s song; “Steal my Sunshine”
was the “feel good” song during the summer of 1999.
I need to focus more on my 2012 District 19 involvement. Racing every month at a
district event is really uncharted territory for most FE racers...well, for me anyway. It
will take some time to foster solid participation. Fortunately, most of the work has
been done!
Tony
: I guess you could say that I'm lucky to have such a nice venue as Legg Lake
close by, and some active clubs that want to help FE get on the race schedule. In fact,
not long after the gas/nitro Nat's, the H20 Gassers had a District 19 Benefit race and
once again invited us FE guys to race. One thing I'll say about running a high-strung
P-Mono heat after three heats of gas Thunder-boats is that one learns to pick your way
through the whirlpools, chop, and rescue boat rollers just to survive. I did just that and
took the class win, or more accurately everyone else fell prey to the slop and had their
hands full making six laps on their bottoms while I just pedaled it around the course!
Now I'm looking forward to the Straight-lines coming up and running four of the
new P-Ltd classes just to get some ink in the record book until the heavyweights from
up North and elsewhere show up in October to really boil it up.
David
: It's awesome to have the district clubs include FE on the schedule. It's very
much appreciated! For 2012, I'm sure we can continue to build on the success we saw
in 2011 in District 19. Also, we've got the 2012 FE Nationals being held June 19th-
23rd at Legg Lake as well. Things are looking up in So Cal!
Tony
: You're right about that. In fact I've tripled my cell phone minutes plan just to
handle the phone chatter going on between all the guys getting into racing the old
guard as well as the new contingent of gas/nitro FE converts. I'm confident that if
things keep going in the direction they have been, District 19 should be able to get FE
racing in Los Angeles to stand on it's own two feet in the near future, due very much
to the boost we've been getting from our gas/nitro brethren. Further (and in a
shameless attempt at self-promotion) I've started a race boat building service,
rcboatbuild@hotmail.com to provide ready-built boats for those who want to get into
the action (somewhat) painlessly! So I'll sign off for now. I’ve got three builds
currently on the bench, four entries to prep for the Straight lines, and as luck would
have it (for me), the race scheduled for Las Vegas this month has just been moved to
Camarillo where we'll get in some more FE race action. Great chatting with you!
Things were a happening for Tony Heller