SCALE INVITATIONAL

In our 60th year of publication, we covered the very first Top Gun in Coral Springs, Florida. Created by Frank Tiano, the event, attracted 40 of the country’s best scale contestants and was sponsored by Model Airplane News and Pacer Technology/Zap Glue. Since 2002, the invitational has enjoyed the unrestricted flying area and manicured runway amenities of Paradise Field at the Lakeland Linder International Airport in Florida. Since its inception, Top Gun has been the venue for many RC scale modeling “firsts.” Foremost among these is the fact that it was the first invitational scale competition ever in RC history. It was also the first scale competition to feature a turbine-powered model. And the category of Team Scale, which combines the building/finishing talents of one modeler with the flying skills of another, was also pioneered here. A more recent addition is the Pro-Am competition classes, which allow new participants with a strong interest in scale to compete. To accommodate the ever-changing dynamic of the event, the Unlimited category was started in 2012. These “team” models push the limits in size and the wow factor. In 2016, Top Gun added the X class for almost-ready-to-fly models, which allowed them to be weathered but not repainted, and in 2018, the Young Guns class was created so that pilots under the age of 18 could be in on the action. So as the models and pilots have continued to develop and evolve, so has the event itself. And after three decades of continued popularity, no one can argue with its success.