Contest 6 of the

Y2K JR / Airsail F3B Series,

hosted by CDSF at Palmerston North,

on December 2-3, 2000.

CD: David James

Summary, Round 1, Round 2

For the second contest in a row we had overseas vistors - this time in the form of Scott Chisholm and Gavin Tweedie from Christchurch. Unfortunately the weather wasn't too kind with strong winds all day Saturday, and rain all day Sunday! The wind led to a fair amount of line breaks and model carnage, and combined with loosing Sunday due to the rain we only managed to get in 2 rounds of competition. One of the more spectacular events was Chris Kaiser's Ellipse 3CAM loosing it's V-tail on launch - the combination of good lift and strong wind had the model absolutely hauling on tow and the front tail mount simply ripped through the fuse on the zoom! Full crow slowed the model's descent enough that the only damage (other than the destroyed tail mount) was a broken nose. The V-tail was recovered from downwind (thanks Wayne!) totally unscathed. Aneil Patel also had a launching incident when his Vindaloo snap-rolled on tow - normally that wouldn't be a major problem, however it went directly into the sun so he couldn't see the model to recover. The result was a loud thump and the Vindaloo looking decidedly less spicy... John Dolphin found out the hard way that his low-rate setting didn't provide enough elevator to allow his newly acquired Sangoma to miss the ground during a speed turn. There were several other minor landing incidents due to the windy conditions, mainly when finishing the distance task low and slow on a downwind leg.

Aside from the drama :-) and wind, conditions were quite testing with lift generally hard to come by. Only 3 out of 29 duration flights managed to make 10 minutes, and the first round of distance had consistently crappy air! Round 2 distance fared much better with most slots having decent lift on course. Speed was in between with the air not making a huge difference in times - the wind alone gave enough launch height for a decent run providing you didn't have sink on course.

Yet another member joins the Sub-20 Club - congratulations Peter Williams with a 18.90 second speed run in round 1. Peter flew very well and also posted the most distance laps with 22 in round 2. Scott Chisholm showed that South Islanders can also fly fast with times of 18.95 and 19.76 seconds. Dave Larsen had the two fastest runs of the contest with 17.35 and 17.54.