Back at the computer screen after 5 days in Muncie. Yesterday was our travel day, very low stress not having to get out of there right after the contest. We (Gary F., Lex M. and Mike R.) dropped of our planes at the local FedEx then headed over to the AMA museum. You can spend hours in there looking at all the historical planes, but what always gets me are the innovative experiments and developments that the hobby has seen over the last 75+ years.
If people are looking at the scores and wondering how some top pilots could take such a beating, then they don't understand the full story and man on man scoring. After the first two days I don't think there were more than 5 flights out of 400 that were over 11:30. There were times where a 6 minute flight would win the heat. There were also times where a guy could be the second to last plane down and end up with a 500. That's the proverbial shovel that all of us got (and in many cases, gave). I flew the entire contest with my Icon. I have a heavier version, around 78 ounces. In the last 4 years of flying this plane the ballast tube has always just collected dust. Not this contest! I was walking around, checking out all the other Icons and asking their owners "how many tubes that time?". I flew most of the time with two tubes (20 oz.) and several of the rounds with four tubes (33.6 oz). I could have gone to more but you had the danger of line breaks. You got two for the entire contest. No pop offs either; you flew it out of you popped off. You'll see some very low scores where the timer has just finished timing the rapid descent of the fuse as the wings tumbled off. I was telling everyone that it was a very good contest for the manufacturers; a lot of lost planes to be replaced. In conditions like these, with 25 mph winds you want your equipment to be in top shape. No out of trim stuff, no loose linkages. I was a victim of my own tinkering; I had reset an elevator servo and the trim was slightly off. I also had a flap servo come loose, so after the second round I got all fixed and started to settle down. Too late! No throw out rounds. The guys on top were also those that for the most part had no problems with their planes. A lot of the flying in the wind had to do with surfing and pumping as much energy out of any wave lift you could find. As Ben mentioned, there was very little thermal turning going on Friday and Saturday. The drill was to launch and clean up the plane as much as possible (lower rates, rudder only for me), camber and pull up when you had a little energy, then get out of there quickly if conditions deteriorated. In an average contest you can get gaggles where everyone goes because everyone is there. It's not always where the lift is. Not in this contest. The gaggle was usually a good place as you could really judge what was going on with the other planes and you could cover someone if they broke off with a thermal. Well, not exactly. Guys would make heroic efforts at working lift downwind and then spend 3 agonizing minutes trying to get back to the field. If you could pull it off you could get out the shovel, but on Friday and Saturday I twice saw the maxes take place out on front, not downwind. Sunday was a different story. Still windy, but lots of legitimate thermals. Now you had to go downwind, usually about 3 times to get your 12. Sometimes it was a case of getting out 5 seconds before everyone else. The bus left the station in a hurry. There were a variety of planes that did well. Sharon's, Supra, Pike Perfect, Icon, Fazer, Stratos V, Espada. There wasn't any clear cut advantage in my mind. It all had to do with the piloting, which was how it was supposed to be. The landings were pretty easy with the stiff headwind and the soft grass. It wasn't a spearing contest. You could come in and practically hover over the tape. When you put the nose down into the ground you would be buried about 3 inches. It was kind of fun to dig away till you found the end of the nose cone. Hey, it's an 80! The barbeque on Saturday night was unreal. Jambalaya, deep fried stuffed turkey, Jalapeno poppers, and some home brewed ale. Mr. Dirr did an outstanding job. He even had some steaks for the food crew and I was sniffing around the grill like a drooling dog. I got a nice piece of the marinated New York that you could cut with a plastic knife. All the volunteers did their job perfectly. Impound, equipment, scoring, all handled without a glitch. Mark N. was a very even handed CD who managed the entire event in a good mood. The pilot's raffle was a really good time. You're hearing the "DVDEEEEEE" online because Paul Naton had donated 40 gift certificates and the prize came up pretty often, including one stretch where it was a DVD 6 times in a row. They'll probably have this event every two years to keep it special. I'm glad I got to be in the inaugural. A very, very good time! JE -- LSF V 122 RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
