(Clicking on a picture will enlarge it. Holding the mouse cursor over a picture will pop up some captions. Clicking on the links below in the brackets will jump you down this page.)
For B class, Kirk flies a modified version of the Skull Bandit with a Magnum .28 engine. For A Class, Kirk flies a
modified version of the Battle Floyd with a Magnum .15 engine. For scale, Kirk has a P-36 and a JKAerotech P-47, both of which still need a little more work on the paint jobs and
markings. They have either OS .25 or Magnum .25 engines. Kirk is now flying his modified Battle Floyd fuselage with a wing of his own design in SSC. He previously flew one of his Bandit wings on one of his Floyd fuselages. Kirk has one Open 1/2 A
airplane, which uses a Norvel .061 engine. 1/2 A is the smallest size of combat airplanes.
In Open A, Kirk's plane on the right and Chris' on the left coming down after a mid-air with each other. Kirk's prop cut Chris' fuselage in half. Chris'
tail is the green bit just above the streamers on his airplane.
Kirk's last P-47 wing and fuselage were totalled at the event. The first picture below becomes larger than usual to better show the detail. In the top
center and right is the yellow debris field from the airplane that hit Kirk's P-47. In the center is the back half of Kirk's fuselage with his original
streamer. Down below the tree line, left of center is Kirk's wing and the front half of the fuselage. The wing still has a cut streamer on the left and has
a huge hole on the right, where the engine of Pete's plane flew through Kirk's wing.
Some additional pictures from the contest.
A wary observer from the woods. Look in the center of the photo, on the right tree trunk.
Tim had only one Open A plane, which didn't last very long. He had a great sense of humor about it and gradually pieced
parts of his airplane back together on his helmet.
At the end of combat on the first day, Chris, Bill and Kirk flew against each other just for fun. Then the three of them plus John C
attempted to fly through the cluster of four poles. John crashed before he could make an attempt. Bill hit the poles and
destroyed his plane on his first try. Kirk bounced off two of the poles and crashed with repairable damage on his first try.
Chris flew between the poles successfully. Kirk and Earl each hit the poles once during actual combat.
Kirk comments on what's going on in the above photo: "What happened was that I was hit on the rear rubber band dowel. The wing
snapped forward, upside down, and wrapped off of the wing seat sideways. The rubber bands are holding the wing on by the aileron servo. The
aileron servo gears are stripped at this point, since when the bands snapped forward, they went through the aileron, tearing it partly off as
you can see, and overloading the servo."
