THE 1999 GATHERING OF TURKEYS
October 9, 10 and 11, 1999
By Ron Fritz

The Michigan gang again trekked down to Pensacola, Florida for the annual Gathering of Turkeys contest at Spencer Field in Pace. As usual, there was a good gathering of modelers in attendance despite the SAM Championships that had been held at Muskogee, Oklahoma just prior to this contest. Some left the SAM Champs as soon as they had flown their last event, even though the contest wasn't over until Friday night and several of the Michigan gang passed up the Muskogee contest to attend the Gathering only.

The contest at Pensacola is a special treat as the field is exceptional, by today's standards, and a delight to fly from. The mile square field is very adequate and off-field landings are rare and usually the result of poor planning or glitches in procedures. Bob Hoffman can attest to this as he watched his Anderson Spitfire powered Super Quaker soared to a tree landing off the south side of the field on Monday afternoon. The plane was found the same afternoon and retrieved, in the rain, on Tuesday morning. The plane had a slight engine overrun and, for this flight, there was no turn in the glide. I hear the Navy is trying to contact Bob in order to find out how an uncontrolled plane can fly such a straight line when their million dollar missiles can't.

Attending the 1999 Gathering were Karl Spielmaker (Da Boss), Ward Delano, Bob Hoffman, Ken Fryling, Bob Edelstein, Bob Erpelding and I. In the previous report on the 1998 event it was reported that Bob Erpelding was a Florida citizen and was assisted by his son. Such is not the case and he still lives in Michigan and his assistant was not his son, but a friend. I don't know where my brain was when I came up with that one. Due to my attending my old ship's reunion and traveling through the south, prior to the contest, there wasn't any room for models in the car so I was a spectator this year. I spent most of my time working my stopwatch timing for the rest of the flyers. I had a bunch of fun and didn't wreck any models.

The three days of flying were interrupted by rain on two days of the contest. We would arrive at the field and fly a couple events and then sit in the cars or go back to the hotel while it rained from about 10:00 AM until about 1:00 PM. The sky always cleared and the flying was excellent for the remainder of the day. Those that placed in the events were Bob Edelstein, Bob Erpelding, Karl Spielmaker and Ward Delano.

Pensacola will be the site of the 2000 SAM Champs and the entire Michigan bunch is planning to attend. This, of course, means that most of us have a number of models to finish or build and test. Undoubtedly I will be testing on site at the Championships as I am the world's slowest builder and it takes the actual event to motivate me to finish models. That is what happened at Muncie in 1998 and happens every year at the MAM contests at Sturgis.

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