The time to prepare and practice for TOC 2000 has passed. The next flights for this year's TOC competitors will be official, scored flights tomorrow morning. Most pilots have spent the last several days sequestered at remote practice sites around the Las Vegas basin. A few were at the TOC field late this afternoon getting in the last few flights before the 6:00 p.m. practice cutoff.

For the most part the last few days have been relatively uneventful. Silvestri Sebastiano had lost an airplane to structural failure, as did Bill Hempel (yet unconfirmed). Warren Thomas experienced a nasty radio hit that left him with control of only one aileron and the throttle. Somehow he managed to get the crippled plane on the ground without further incident! Giichi Naruke also lost his backup plane... it was the original gold "Flag" scheme FiberClassis G-202 that Jason Shulman flew in 1998. Naruke bought the plane shortly after the '98 TOC.

This year's format is essentially the same as last year. The top 14 pilots will advance to the semi-finals on Saturday. The highest Known score for each pilot will carry over to the Saturday's semi-finals. The top 7 pilots will advance to the finals on Sunday, again with the highest Known score being carried over to the Finals. Programs are weighed: Known 30%, Unknown 50% and Four-Minute Freestyle 20%. The lowest scores are dropped.

The first flight Wednesday will be 8:00 a.m. We'll post the first update as soon as we have scores or news to report. Stay tuned! Bear with us if we encounter any server troubles. The activity on the site has increased dramatically in the last day or two and our ISP has been slow to respond to our service upgrade requests.

Wednesday's Known and Unknown sequences are posted on the Sequences page.
The Official TOC Rules are up on the Rules page.