Halloween pumpkins

here are a few pumpkins carved up by Keith Amerson and his family!!!

Titan Pro-24 finally approved for pdga play at the championship level.

Today we received final; approval for the Titan Pro-24 disc golf target at the championship level.

The hold-up was due to us waiting for the pdga to change a specification to read measurement of the inside diameter as opposed to outside diameter. This was was changed earlier this year.

The Titan surely meets or accedes all of the requirements to be used at the highest level of play as you can see in the pictures.

Our baskets are made of 1/2 inch cold rolled steel right here in St. Louis Missouri,,,, MADE in AMERICA,,,,is the only way to go!!!!

These baskets are guaranteed against bending and breaking and cost $400.00 per basket,,,,, well worth the extra couple bucks.

18 hole course designs and installations come with up to 300 custom stamped discs and much more.

Brian, Dave, and others,

Gateway Disc Sports recently submitted the Titan Pro-24 for PDGA testing. This target passed all PDGA tests, so I've added it to the list of PDGA-approved targets at the Championship level. This target is now PDGA-approved, although formal certification will be made by the Board of Directors at their next meeting. Test measurements are listed below and a photograph of the target and an updated list of approved targets are attached.

One further note on this target is that slight modifications have been made to the basket since it was sent to the TSC last year for preliminary testing before formal submittal for approval, pending modifications to the PDGA target standards. Consequently, Dave McCormack has agreed to send a sample of the latest version of the Titan Pro-24 to the IDGC by mid-December of this year so that players can use it and so that a change in the maximum size of gaps in the basket can be updated on the list of approved targets. Brian, please provide that data to me when you receive the target from Dave.

Titan Pro-24

Certification No. 09-25

PDGA fee: $350

Testing class determined by the TSC: Championship

Basket Properties

Height above ground: 78 cm

Depth: 23 cm

Inside diameter: 67 cm

Minimum size gaps: 20.5 cm

Number of reps: 12

Frame construction: Galvanized metal

Covering: Absent

Basket absent: No

Deflection Assembly Properties

Maximum width: 53 cm
Number of outer chains: 12
Number of inner chains: 12
Frame construction: Galvanized metal
Top construction: Galvanized metal
Mesh: Absent
Maximum size of gaps on top: 14 cm

Other properties
Target zone height: 51 cm
Width of pole: 4.8 cm
Pole construction: Metal

DISContinuously,

Jeff Homburg (#1025)

PDGA Technical Standards Chair

AND MORE FROM FALL HARVEST

more pics from the fall harvest

Fall Harvest from Fun in the Sun to Pain in the Rain!!

Well its over and I'm still recovering.

I'll put together the story tomorrow but here are a few pics.

Here are a few more pics to entice you!!

Ozark Fall Harvest Noon Tomorrow

Theres still plenty of time to pack up your camping gear and head down to Ozark Mountian for this weekends event.

1st round doesnt start until noon on Saturday and theres also motels within 25 minutes for thos who do not want to camp.

It may have rained all day Yesterday but being a hilly mountain the water drains off very well.

There will be plenty of water in the creeks and lakes and Ive made a few changes to the 2 courses,( making them easier) yeah right!!!!

The courses were looking great and the weather is going to be sunny and near 60 both days.

Here are some pics of Ozark and Akits run,,,,enjoy!!

Ozark Falll Harvest Next Weekend October 24th & 25th

its time again to camp party and play disc golf on 2 of the hardest and most scenic courses in the world.

Ozark Muuntain par 72 and Akita's Run Par 54

the link to the world rankings is not working

92.45%	1	3	3	4	4	2	Nikko Locastro	11534	39.20	92.5%	93.9%	62.2%	96.4%
92.18%	2	2	2	2	2	0	Nate Doss	11794	31.60	92.2%	93.4%	54.7%	97.2%
91.84%	3	4	4	3	3	1	Josh Anthon	17946	21.06	91.8%	93.6%	49.9%	97.3%
91.54%	4	14	14	18	19	10	Michael Johansen	20300	10.39	91.5%	91.3%	55.2%	96.8%
90.92%	5	5	5	5	5	0	Barry Schultz	6840	28.74	90.9%	93.2%	49.6%	96.2%
90.73%	6	7	7	6	6	1	Dave Feldberg	12626	41.32	90.7%	93.0%	50.4%	95.8%
90.38%	7	6	6	7	7	-1	Avery Jenkins	7495	44.65	90.4%	92.5%	52.9%	95.1%
89.88%	8	8	8	8	8	0	Ken Climo

Ranked # 1 in the world

With this latest victory at USDGC Nikko jumped from 3rd to 1st in the prime discs world rankings.

here there news release:

Special early edition of the Prime Discs World Rankings. With Nikko's win and Jesper's abysmal (for him) rounds at the USDGC, Nikko leap frogs Nate Doss to claim the #1 spot in the world rankings.

http://primediscs.com/world-rankings.asp

risk taking pays off ,,,,, to the tune of $15,000.00

Well I only talked to Nikko for a second today,,, but it was enough to hear how excited he was about winning the 2009 USDGC at Winthrop University in Rock Hill South Carolina.

I got an update from Mo Higgins ( this years womens advanced world champion who was watching it on line) stating Nikko was up by 2 with 2 holes t o play and then 15 minutes later,,,,, it was confirmed,,,, Nikko held on to win his first Major championship and the largest single pay day in disc golf history of $15,000.00 plus the $2,000.00 for the NT points series and another $4,000.00 performance bonus from Gateway disc Sports. Not too shabby for a guy using Spirits, Assassins,, Blazes Wizards and his newly found love for the magic as his putter.

BOOOOOOYAAK!!!!!!!

Congrats also goes out to Josh Anthon for a scorching 53 during the final round and coming back and getting 3rd!

Good luck to all Competitors at this years USDGC

While I was looking around the usdgc website and planet disc golf I saw mention of Nikko and Matt orum.

Here is an excerpt from their site:

---

The Risk-Takers

The Winthrop Gold course is fraught with hazards and penalties throughout it’s nearly 9800 feet layout. Besides the lake that especially comes into play on holes 5 and 17, the USDGC staff has been quite innovative by installing thousands of feet of string around the course creating narrower fairways and hazards that the players have to consider at almost every turn. Many of the top pros will tell you that their primary objective is to avoid any OBs during the round, but that is clearly easier said than done.

Yet, many of the young guns play such a fearless brand of disc golf, they almost always will go for shots that more experienced veterans may shy away from. Nikko Locastro and Matt Orum and a growing number of others often defy conventional wisdom with their “diesel” style of disc golf. These are the players that may be generally categorized as “risk-takers.” They emanate supreme confidence and a “take no prisoners” approach to almost every shot. Indeed, their talent levels may warrant very aggressive play on most courses in America, but the Winthrop Gold challenge is a far cry from most other courses in America.

One thing we will be watching are the “risk-takers” at this year’s USDGC. It may come down to a single throw, or it may be exemplified throughout an entire round. But what will be most intriguing is whether the aggressive, risky disc golfer will be rewarded with a US Championship this year, or whether the player with one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake, when needed, will find their way into the winners

hole 9 at lindenwood

HOle 9 at lindenwood ( 1 of 4 holes where this lake comes into play)

pictures of course at Lindenwood.

Here are some pics of the forst few holes at lindenwood showing the nice mix.

Looking for somoene to do you tube marketing

We are looking for someone that would like to do You tube marketing for our company.

I have a lot of really cool footage that is in hi-8 that needs to be digitalized and edited for use for producing video clips.

We would also like to produce new footage so, having a nice camera and the skills to work it and edit the footage would be a plus.

Disc Golf related JOB Opportunity::

Must be willing to relocate and travel.

( you do not have to be a good disc golfer for this position :) )

We have had some great responses in our search for Graphic artists, mostly from people who can only work from their own pc.

We are still Looking for someone part of full time to work in the shop that has expereince with cutting and weeding vinyl and knows their way around Illustrator and photo shop.

Interested???

email David@gdstour.com or call me on my cell 314 303 1488.

Midnight Ramblings

So I got an email a little while a go from Stancil Johnson

He is writing a book on disc golf, from what I hear its pretty comprehensive and I think he been working on it for quite a few yares now.

Anyway, he asked a few questions in regards to a technical paper I wrote a few years back.

I started to answer the questions he had and just started rambling away and,,,,,, well here it is hope its interesting to someone

Ok where to start, first off I too have spoken with Peter a few times ( Geoff and Johnny are 2 of my best disc golf buddies)

Peter gave me quite a bit of insight on how much the under cavity is effecting the flight, which is a big reason some of our newer discs have a concave inside rim under the flight plate, specifically where the rim depth meets the flight plate. I’ve noticed the c urrent discs we use this on ( Apache, Warrior and Element maintain their launch velocities much longer, which equates to longer flights.

Combine this with dimple ( Diablo DT) and surface technology ( Illusion, assassin, apache) on the discs and I guarantee we have some of the best performing discs on the market.

I really don’t mind the questions and observations and know exactly what your talking about when you say I have some contradicting terms. Most of anything I have written or you have read is probably not finished material. There is a whole lot I am leaving out with what I have released to the public so far. Basically I produced some information for the public to create some interest and it hoped to be able to write more someday. At some point I will spend the time and develop much more elaborate technical papers on all that I have learned through disc making and test flying as well as the polymer development.

One thing I haven’t gone into great detail is about resistance to turn and gyroscopic procession.

theres still a whole lot to learn about disc geometry and how things like weight distribution from flight plate to wing effect the flight. by effect the flight I mean maintaining launch rotation, the resistance to turn, stabilizing flight during the glide portion of the flight and the fade on deceleration.

I'm fairly certain discs that are MORE gyroscopic will fade more than discs that are less given the same speed and rotations. the thing is the more gyroscopic a disc is the longer it will stay spinning.

(a question was asked about what I call the shape under the parting line on the wing)

Under camber would be the term for the shape or distance from the nose ( or leading edge) to the bead ( or part that would touch the table if it were laid flat). Disc with more under camber than dome ( shape above the parting line or nose) will be more over stable and have more resistance to turn as well.

And yes the opposite is true. If there is less under camber than dome the discs will be easier to turn, but discs will a lot more mass at the rim will fade sooner and harder than those with less ( more centrifugal designs like mid-ranges).

I suspect you will see very few long range drivers ever produced again with large concaved under cambers like a whippet or blaze.

Small amounts of concave here or small beads do a much better job of giving a disc resistance to turn ( HSS high speed stabliility). IMO

You should see our latest disc,, the APache

It has just about equal amounts of dome VS under camber, but a small bead to give it the resistance to turn it needs for high velocity high rotation releases. We also have an unpolished under camber ( with grooves from the cutters) as opposed to a polish surface here. This technology does and incredible job of reducing over all drag on the discs.

We also have the larger radius where the rim depth meets the flight plate to further reduce the drag on the disc as opposed to a tight shoulder that does not allow the air flow out of the cavity as easy.

some could say this trapped air gives the disc more lift but I'd rather see a long range driver maintain its speed as opposed to slowing down because of the added drag.

I could go on and on about how these variables can easily change based on mung or nose trajectory, which can allow more or less air to reach the under camber and subsequently the under cavity.

I’ll give you an example: top pros can throw putters at high trajectories ( 40 plus feet in the air) but they can still be somewhat flat,,,even nose down and fly far,, while some lesser skilled players will put an air bounce or nose up release, even when trying to throw a driver 6 feet of the ground. this shot goes nose up and stalls without getting much distance no matter how hard its thrown.

So much is going on with the flight of a discs its dumbfounding.

Let me explain how many variables there can be for just the throw, never mind the disc shape and/or aerodynamics of the surface.

Here are the factors:

Launch speeds = 0-75 mph

Off axis rotation = smooth as silk or wobbling like a tire missing all but one lug nut.

Rotation = from just about Zero to 2500 ( I would love to test this to see how fast a disc can actually be spun upon release.)

Left and right angle of release ( Hyzer) = with 90 degrees being a flat release a disc can be released from 0 to 90 or from 91- 180 ( EVEN MORE IF YOU COUNT THUMBERS AND OVERHANDS)

Mung angle of release = from a dead flat to really nose down or really nose up. ( not sure of the degrees maybe plus or minus 20 degrees is possible depending on trajectory.)

Trajectory = worm buring or straight up in the air and everything in between. typically a disc is thrown between 3 and 30 feet off the ground.

Wind = up wind, down wind, cross winds basicall fro 12 olclock all the way around back to 12,,, 0 mph or 60 mph,,, all effect a discs flight.

Temperature = freezing cold or burning hot.

humidity and barometric pressure = ok maybe I'm reaching here, but I bet its a variable.

Elevation = 200 feet below sea level ( Badwater Basin) or 10,000 feet at sno-bowll in flaggstaff

Combining all these variable will produce just about an infinite amount of combinations of them, basically no 2 discs can be thrown the same.

Lets assume the following throws are with stable flying discs like a Sabre or Tee bird.

Player 1:

55 MPH with lots of off axis rotation and only 800 rotations per minute. If this guy does not have a nose up hyxer release the discs will turn straight to the right.

Player 2:

45 mph release speed that’s smooth as silk and 1200 rpms will produce a flat flying shot when released with a touch of hyzer and slightly nose up.

Player 3:

45 mph release speed that’s smooth as silk but with 1800 rpms will need more hyzer or more nose up or it will turn over and go to the right.

Player 4:

45 mph release with only 800 rotations per second and a smooth release will need to turn the disc over right out of the hand and it wil probably still hyzer out because of lack of spin.

ok I need some sleep!

LIndenwood coming along really well.

We have been out at Lindenwood a few times in the last week.

Friday we had a Bobcat in the woods making some really cool fairways and greens.

Yesterday me and 4 college students were out doing some hand work and dragging

cut branches off the course.

We played a whole round and I noticed some places the course needed some adjustments.

Heres the latest revisions ( hole # 3 is still not complete as there still working on the grade from the house to the lake.

I'll have some pics of the holes up later today.