10th Annual Aero Pageant -- Ojima, Japan, November 2-3 by: Dave von Linsowe In conjunction with the 10th Annual Aero Pageant, the International Airmeet was added for the first time. The Aero Pageant is sponsored by Denpa Jikken - sha Co., Ltd which is the R/C magazine of Japan represented by the President, Mr. Masuda. The Mayor, Mr. Aizawa is also part of the organizational team. The event hosts fliers from around the world for demonstration flying. It is not uncommon to have 40,000 spectators present for the one day event! The addition of the International Airmeet brought together the top 10 pattern fliers based on last years World Championships for competition competing for 10,000,000 yen. That's $86,467.79 based on the exchange rate when we left. 2,000,000 yen or $17,293.56 for first place.  The list of invited competitors was: Yoichiro Akiba, Japan Hajime Hatta, Japan Ivan Kristensen, Canada Roland Matt, Liechtenstein Wolfgang Matt, Liechtenstein Giichi Naruke, Japan Christophe Paysant Le Roux, France Hanno Pretner*, Austria Queque Somenzini*, Argentina Dave von Linsowe, USA *Pretner was unable to attend due to health. *Somenzini was unable to compete because fire destroyed his aircraft before the competition.  The aircraft flown had to meet the requirements for F3A pattern airplanes. The patterns to be flown consisted of a known sequence and a freestyle. Each contributing 50% to the final score. Friday before the contest was to be official practice, Saturday was to be qualifying and Sunday was to be the finals with the Aero Pageant. The Event -- Fred Weaver and myself arrived late Thursday night at Narita airport in Tokyo after a long flight from Las Vegas via Los Angles. We stayed as long as possible in Vegas for practice reasons, we knew the opportunity for practice in Japan would be slim (although, the weather in Vegas didn't cooperate for much practice). Friday greeted us with rain. First we met with the Mayor of Ojima Town, Gunma Prefecture and participated in a green tea ceremony (the tea was very green but tasted quiet good). Sunday was to be the top five flying in the finals, but because of the weather all eight of us were to fly which meant that we would fly one round of the known without a throw away and two rounds of the freestyle. Several of us were using the YS 1.40 and we were all very pleased with the performance. It has the ease of use of the AC with more power than the SC! Ivan used streamers on his wing tips for the free style, it was very graceful. Akiba was flying a Cap 231 in the known and free style. The airplane didn't seem to be as locked-in as the rest and was probably suffering from lack of practice and trimming. The final standing were:  1st Christophe Le Roux 2nd Roland Matt 3rd Naruke 4th Wolfgang Matt 5th Dave von Linsowe 6th Hatta 7th Ivan Kristensen 8th Akiba  I would not be surprised to see more people try semi-scale airplanes in pattern competition. It has been shown that it can be done and it my even spark new interest in pattern. I would like to give a special thanks to Mr. Masuda and the organizers of the Aero Pageant for their warm and gracious hospitality, to Aaron for helping us with communication and adjusting to the Japanese customs, to Fred Weaver for all his help and support as my teammate for the TOC and Japan, calling and keeping things fun and to my wife Janell for all the behind the scenes work to organize the trip and to take care of all the tasks I didn't have time to do.   NOTE - This is a rather condensed version of Dave's report - full report will appear in K-FACTOR. Winner with his plane.  More Pix: Dave's USA Star Naruke's Planes Pilot Group w/planes Plane