Welcome to Torrey Pines GullsJerry Craft – Co-Modeler of the Year – 2001
Jerry Craft became a Gulls member in the late 1990s. In 1999, he served as club Winchmaster although it seems he wasn’t involved in many thermal duration contests. He enjoyed flying slope at Torrey and together with Ron Scharck and Tom Copp, organized the first US F3F slope race at Torrey Pines in June of 1999.
That very successful event became the foundation for a lot of man-on-man F3F racing in 2000 with 18 slope races under the auspices of the Southern California Slope Racers (SCSR) formed by Tom Copp and Jerry Craft. The SCSR was a mirror of the Northern California Slope Racers (NCSR) that flew at Los Banos and other locations in northern California. Thus, also was born a tradition of North-South competition, just as there had been for years in thermal duration. He noted in the April 1999 newsletter that “one of the comments I hear frequently is that TPG pilots are friendly. As a group we tend to say “Hi” to visitors.” Ron Brown, George Joy, and Jerry Fry made a point of doing that during 1999. Jerry even arranged for a TPG night at the San Diego Gulls ice hockey game. He also helped run fun fly events at Torrey including a “Redman Rules” style event in November 1999. Jerry provided a lecture at the TPG monthly meeting in January 2000 to help cement F3F in the minds of TPGers.
In December 1999, Jerry helped establish the first e-communication group for the TPG. This was [email protected]. This lasted through 2000 but without much use and became ”www.egroups.com/TPGulls”. By March 2001, Jerry converted into a yahoo group, and the first TPG Yahoo group was born and then lasted for many years.
In 2000, Jerry Craft helped run the annual TPG Toys for Tots campaign, helping local children receive gifts for the Christmas holidays. Two barrels full of toys were collected at the event December 3 at Poway thanks to 25 pilots who showed up for the thermal contest and donation. TPG member supporters for this such as Don Clark, Colin Craft, Chris Schaffer, Mike Smith, Bren Lugo, Garth Warner and Dan Weisz showed up early to get everything set up so that the club and the Toys for Tots drive could be featured on KUSI-TV News. The news truck was waiting at the gate at 6:25am and while it was an early start for everyone, the event generated a lot of solid publicity for the club. U.S. Marines Sgt. Robertson and Sgt. Huff were there in their dress uniforms to collect the toys and provide the TPG with a nice certificate of thanks.
Jerry served as TPG rep to the American Slope Racing Organization (ARSO), a special interest group (SIG) formed by the AMA to pull together pilots to represent the US at the 2002 F3F Viking race, what was at the time the world championships for slope racing. Jerry also represented TPG to the SCSR in 2001. In 2001 Jerry also served as TPG representative to the San Diego Association of Model Clubs, an important regional collection of all AMA clubs in San Diego County.
Considerable effort was made throughout 2001 by Jerry to help with the oversight of 20 F3F contests throughout California. These included a USA Viking Race team qualifier at Los Banos.
Jerry continued as SCSR and SDCAMC rep in 2002 also served as 2002 “Top Gun Coordinator”. At that time pilots collected points towards the Top Gun trophy depending on how they did in TPG Unlimited TD, TPG RES, TPG hand launch, and SCSR F3F slope racing. Due to his many volunteering efforts in the 1999-2000 time frame the club bestowed the Modeler of the Year trophy on Jerry in 2001.