The planes are held pointing up at the sky, ready to pierce through the wispy, white clouds and soar over the baked, brown ground.
The heat seeps into everything it can, turning the open field into a baking tray.
But Amy Pool doesn’t mind. Out on the grass, the worries of the outside world disappear somewhere into the sapphire sky, out of reach of even the highest-flying planes.
Her road to the 2022 Model Aeronautics F3J World Championships wasn’t easy, though, and it almost even seemed like it would never come to be.
Competing in the F3J category, a version of the classic thermal duration class, where pilots all take off simultaneously and must land as close to the target time as possible, Pool was given an opportunity in 2019, when a new rule was introduced to encourage female participation in the sport. It allowed national teams to take a fourth member to the World Championships if they were a female, essentially giving the team a huge safety net since only the top three pilots were judged.
And so, despite what Pool believes wasn’t her best performance, she was chosen for the 2020 World Championships.
The call came in the middle of a storm. Holed up in her closet, Pool got the message that she was chosen in January of 2020, but it didn’t feel right. There was nothing about her being a woman that affected her ability to fly other than physical strength, and she saw no point in just competing against other women.
So she talked with friends, family and colleagues, discussing what she should do. She was unsure of her attendance until a friend supported her, bringing up that she had twice beaten other world champions at events. This reminder convinced her to follow through and attend the competition, but something completely out of her control would soon happen: the COVID-19 pandemic.
Suddenly, the competition was pushed back with no date in sight. She couldn’t fly with friends anymore, leaving her to break planes by herself in the middle of the field.
She slowly lost motivation for the sport she once loved.
Eventually, when 2022 rolled around, it seemed like things were going to really happen this time, but she found herself out of practice and out of any drive to compete.
So she went back to her heart. She packed her boxes and flew back to the Northwest, where she had grown up. Bouncing from home to home in May, she reconnected with her roots—meeting old friends, flying planes and finding that love for the sport she had been competing in for 25 years.
And it worked. She found that passion, that reason to go out and practice, back home. After a month of flying, she competed in the Czech Championships, where she flew decently. After five days of open competitions, she met with the U.S. National Team in Slovakia for the World Championships, where she placed in the finals, was the second-best-placing U.S. team member and took home gold for her country.
