The first full three-day event hosted by H*E*A*T at the AAF Tank Museum in Danville, VA is complete and what a busy couple of days they were!  We had over 20 tankers (and truckers) attend the event  with over 40 tanks. A quick shot of the attendees:

First and foremost we want to thank all of the attendees for coming all the way they did and working with us to make this an successful event. Of course none of this would be possible without the outstanding help of the museum staff, especially Karen and Doug. Hats off to all of you. We really appreciate the support.

 The newly revamped battlefield was on display with a new (fourth) bridge the river at the start of the "bowling alley". Over 50 new trees were added and a number of hills re-groomed for the event. By the end of the event there was the usual wear and tear, but it held up pretty well. 

We managed to squeeze in a fair number of battles and left enough time to socalize in a light-hearted environment. Most of the battles were flagged and utilized random teams to keep it competitive, fresh and dynamic. A collection of images from the three days can be seen in this gallery. Tankers represented the ACE, AGE, EastPac, HEAT and VAD clubs. For future reference, we recorded the frequencies folks had or could use.  These are listed here for future reference. The 75Mhz band is getting pretty full these days. 

Over the three days, predominatly two types of battles were run. The first was the "teams from a hat to the death" with various start points and blocked bridges. The second was a series of 4 team, rotating starting corners battles (each of the 4 teams won one of the series). On Friday and Saturday evenings and on Sunday morning, we ran a series of 6 competition "battle royals" and a 4 man/4 team platoon tournament. The winning platoon was 506 Willing with medals presented for first, second and third (photos ). The battle royals were used to present medals for individual tankers (photos ). The results were added to seed the yearly database. We ran a few night battles on Saturday night as well (a little tough to see the flags in the dark ). 

Well, by all accounts folks seemed to have a lot of fun. We in H*E*A*T folks had fun running it (tired, but very happy) and it was all because of the great bunch attendees we had. We were all looking to have some fun and drive some tanks and I think that best sums up what happend over the Spring Open. We are planning to follow this one up with another in the fall.  Stay tuned to the H*E*A*T website for details as soon as we get them together.

Thanks again to everyone involved!