The weather in Danville favored us for the 3rd year running.  We enjoyed some great tank chat at lunch and dinner. And as is tradition, we ended the long day with some "night battles".

We ran several new battle scenarios at this Fun Run.  Including Doug's "Around the World" battle in which we had to fight through one zone at a time to reach the finish.  We also tried the "Capture the Flag" style battle that the DAK guys do out West.  We ran it twice with DAK rules so that everyone got to be "runners" or "defenders".  It worked well.  As the objective in the Rock Quarry, we had Doug's new T34/88 SP gun.  This was a good choice for the job since it had such high gun elevation.  We ran these DAK heats with unlimited respawns to ensure that the runners would make it to the objective alive. So the final victors were determined by the clock.

After these battles, we came up with a Danville variation to the DAK game. The plan was to have BOTH teams as aggressors in a side-by-side dash to the final objective!  One team ran for "even" flags while the other team ran for "odd" flags...like in a game of pool.  Doug's tank was added to a team, so the final objective was merely the "9" or "10" flag, depending on which team you were on.

A sneaky tactic that developed on-the-fly for both teams was to "cripple" enemy tanks enough to slow them down, but not to kill them, (because they would just come back with full speed after respawning).   The tricky endgame to this scenario was that your team lost the power to respawn once the enemy captured their last flag.  So the ultimate victory was decided by a traditional shoot-out to the death.  Everyone seemed to like running over the flags. So we hope to come up with a few new games for these "flags" before the next Fun Run. Thanks DAK, for the fun idea!

We had the "Tank Olympics" scenario again this year.  We ran an obstacle course and hit stationary tanks placed in tough spots.  Doug, Scott and Dana brought home the gold for Team USA!

Willy was there, of course. So of course we ran a few "Tank Recovery Battles".  These are always some of the most from for us drivers, and fun for the visiting spectators to watch too!  Whenever we got knocked out, we would yell for Willy or Jake to pick us up with a truck.  It's cool to watch the little motorized ramps drop so you can drive your tank onto the back!

Well, the 3rd Annual H*E*A*T Fun Run was a success.   Everyone had a blast.  Many thanks go out once again to Doug, Karen and the AAF Tank Museum staff for having us for this end-of-year party.

Everybody else:  please get your new tank projects ready for the 3-day competition battles at the "2nd Annual H*E*A*T Spring Open" on March 13, 14, 15, 2009.   We already have replies from 20 tankers who plan to be there, so if you have been on the fence about coming to Danville...this is the one!!!

Photos from the event can be seen here .