The move to Lakeland International Airport was made in 2002, and the new location offers some of the best facilities for the pilots of any competition of its type. With wide-open flight areas and a long and smooth runway, the new Top Gun field is quickly endearing itself to both pilots and spectators alike. Five flight stations were in use this year, and it wasn’t uncommon for four planes to be in the air at any given time.

Each flight station is designed to have room enough for the pilot and a caller as well as two flight judges seated next to them. The fifth flight station was new this year. It was added to accommodate the new ProAm class and the judges that were devoted solely to this class. The flight judges at Top Gun are highly experienced: most have been with the event for as many as 10 years or more. This guarantees uniform judging, and is one of the reasons Top Gun is such a highly respected scale event. No old boys club here to favor the local guys; only tough and fair judges.

This year, Top Gun employed the use of two runways to allow for maximum flexibility with a wide range of aircraft from pre WWI tail draggers to modern day jets. The main runway is actually the taxiway for the airport’s primary runway. Despite being a taxiway, Top Gun’s runway is an ample 50 feet wide and it extends for thousands of feet. On the far side of the taxiway, a new Bermuda grass runway was provided for planes that would benefit from a grass runway. This is the type of attention to detail that helps make the competition fair for all types of planes.

STATIC SCORING
Except for the ProAm class, all planes are closely scrutinized and viewed from all angles and judged for scale outline accuracy, color and markings, craftsmanship and realism. Each pilot presents his scale documentation to a panel of three judges in an effort to obtain the maximum yet elusive 100 points. The rules are simple: Make your plane look as though it were a full-size aircraft that was hit by a shrinking ray. It’s just that simple. If you want to do well in Top Gun, there are no shortcuts and real experience is essential. The modelers make every effort to hide any object not found on full-scale aircraft. Switches, control horns, linkages, pushrods or any other anomaly that stands out and makes the plane look like a model can all cause a downgrade if, in the opinion of the judge, it could have been avoided.

The modeler must replicate and position all markings of the scale subject in the exact same spot as on the full-scale aircraft. Outline is another tough discipline. In fact, the majority of scale kits and plans sold are not up to competition standards unless they have been designed specifically to meet those standards. Modelers have to modify their aircraft in the building process to match the documentation they use. Therefore, the golden rule in super scale competition is to decide on the documentation and have everything ready, including the paint scheme, before any building is started. Modifications to kits or plans can be done from the beginning and are allowed.

Check out the scoring tables within the article. This will give you an idea of how accurate the Top Gun planes are, and how tough the competition is. Several planes are in the near perfect scoring category. The highest scoring plane this year in static was the Piper Super Cub built by Graeme Mears. A score of 99.667 was well deserved for this masterpiece.