A quick write-up about our XC event today... We are all back from the field now, some at the restaurant having dinner, some at home (me including). The weather did not quite cooperate today - low overcast, very breezy, light drizzle from time to time. We had fun nonetheless!
The day started for me early with driving to my club fellow Brady Baggs who has 2 pick-up trucks and leaving my car there. Brady and I drove 2 trucks to the field where Dick Proseus was already doing some warm-up flying. We set up the big tent, and in the meanwhile more people showed up for the XC fun-fly. Despite the gloomy weather we had more than 10 people on the field, with about 8-9 people ready to try the cross-country course. The day started slow, nobody really wanted to fly until Dick Proseus started catching fast passing thermals and went on course. Brady drove the truck for Dick, and soon the first result was in. Dick made the 1.8mi distance in 15:28 and had to do 7 relaunches on course! You can tell the conditions were not easy but the mark was set, and more people assembled their planes and started flying on the field, trying to catch a thermal and get on course. The rules were such that for every relaunche on the course the pilot gets a 5 min penalty. This allowed a pilot to continue on the course and get a result instead of going back and starting over. 2 more people went on course, Erich Schlitzkus and Russ Bennett, but both could not improve on Dick's time, with 9 and 8 relaunches on course. Phil Barnes showed up at the field and went right into the battle - he went on course without even checking the route first. Phil improved the best result by about half a minute - still 7 relaunches. It was obvious that the only approach to the task was to get into an air bubble on the field and fly as far as possible on the first launch. Then simply launch high and drive fast hoping that another bubble will keep the plane in the air a bit longer and allow the pilot to drive a longer distance in one launch. I spent a lot of time throwing the plane on the field trying to find that one thermal that could take me as far as possible on the first launch. The thermals were weak and breaking up very quickly. With 2oz of ballast the plane just did not climb at all. And I knew that I would need the ballast for the second part of the course going upwind. After many launches, interruptions in the flying because of the drizzle, re-charging, and going on course twice just to return back in 1 minute, I finally decided to take the next thermal and just go for it, because the time was slowly running out and I did not have any results. Brady volunteered to be the driver, and after 2 unsuccessful attempts and returning back soon after leaving the field, I finally caught a light bubble and we went on course. As I said before, the tactic was simple - launch high, jump on the truck and get going as fast as you can, hoping for some positive air on the way. On my fourth launch while running around a house I realized that the plane is not coming down - lift! I started circling in lift while running and jumping over a ditch, jumped on the truck when Brady drove around the house under some high trees and caught up with me, and we kept driving like crazy. I finished the course in 5 launches total! The whole exercise took only 7min 31sec! Phil Barnes immediately recruited me as a driver and we soon went on course. Using the same tactic of launching high and driving fast, Phil was able to finish the course in 6 re-launches and 7:42. Russ, Dick, Erich, Don Vetter, Brady all went around the course, but could not improve the best result. The conditions were quite difficult and at times drizzle forced us to hide under the tent. Phil went on course again with me as the driver and Don Vetter as the photographer :-) In the rush of the race, Phil launched his plane right into the trees in the narrow section of the road, right in front of Don and I. The plane was severely damaged, so we went back... Here is are the final results of our XC "race": pilot raw time relaunches final result Oleg Golovidov 7:31 4 27:31 Phil Barnes 7:41 6 37:41 Russ Bennett 9:31 6 39:31 Erich Schlitzkus 11:00 7 46:00 Dick Proseus 11:17 7 46:17 Brady Baggs 9:30 8 49:30 Don Vetter 19:29 10 69:29 We are going to fly the main HLG event tomorrow and Sunday. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for tomorrow is not great again, but we are hoping for the best. I will post another write-up next week after we are done. I will also upload pictures to my web-site when I have time next week. Stay tuned. Thermals. Oleg. 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.
