Contest
1 of the
Y2K JR /
Airsail F3B Series,
hosted
by AucklandSoar at Ambury Farm Park,
on March
25-26, 2000.
CDs:
Dave Larsen & Chris Kaiser
Summary, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5
The first contest of
the Y2K series saw some pretty mixed flying. I think everyone made a basic
mistake at some time during the two days, some getting away with it while others
were not so lucky. Most spectacular was probably Dave Larsen cutting base A in
speed, then getting off line as he looped back resulting in a safety line cross
and zero score. Aneil Patel also suffered a safety line infringement, and 3
others copped penalties for landing inside the safety area during distance.
Peter Nola gave a demonstration of how to miss the ground on landing: he thought
his Ellipse 3CAM was safely down on the spot only to see it balloon up, stall,
then perform the classic tip-nose-tip-tail dance across the ground. The
resulting damage is repairable but was enough to put him out of the contest.
Dave Morgan had the first flight on his newly acquired Ellipse 2V immediately
before the first round and was obviously struggling to come to grips with it
during the contest, not being helped by a warped tail.
Conditions were excellent for soaring on
both days with lots of sunshine, a reasonable breeze to launch into (most of the
time...), and some nice thermal activity. The last duration round of the contest
saw some really horrible air until the last relaunch of the last slot - this
started out saggy and downwind, but halfway up the line the model hit a huge
thermal and the tension skyrocketed. After coming off the line so did the model!
Big lift was also present for the first two distance slots with Dave Larsen
setting a new New Zealand record of 26 laps in the first slot, and Chris Kaiser
racking up 25 in the second. Congrats DL! Speed times were generally good but
not spectacular, the fastest being 17.55 seconds by Chris Kaiser in the last
round.
A big thank you to the AucklandSoar
club members that helped out at various times throughout the contest - their
help enabled us to compete 5 rounds and made running the contest much easier.
Much appreciated guys, how about bringing a model next time?!
