A fairly small group made the second trek this year to Syossett, Long Island, for the LISF Fall contest: David Walter, Lost Bruzual, Mark Drela, Bruce Schneider and Yours Truly. Fritz Bien was committed to a wedding, Jeff Newcum has left the hobby and sold all his planes, Jan Kansky had messed up his schedule, John Nilsson is out rooting for Kerry, and Miner Crary must have decided not to visit his relatives in NY. They missed out on a great contest. The forecast was for light winds, temperatures in the 70’s and partly cloudy conditions, which turned out to be pretty close. Saturday’s briefing followed the standard, tough, LISF script: Man-on-man, Experts against Experts, Sportsmen against Sportsmen, no field boundaries (but good luck finding your plane in the woods), you get sent home in disgrace if you land in the near-by soccer fields, one pop-off in the first round for experts, and after that “fly it out”, sportsmen got one pop-off per day, line breaks would result in public humiliation, landings 5 foot graduated tapes, 50 points max. Round 1 was a 7 minute round, and after that we flew 8 minute rounds with a final one of 15 minutes. The first two rounds were quite challenging with broad and very light lift. Mark Drela’s Supra and Mark’s fingers performed superbly in these early rounds. I am dying to get my hands on a 48 oz, 130” ship, but I know I don’t have the skill, patience, etc. to build one from scratch. The rest of the rounds we had slightly better lift, but it never boomed, and you really had to work at getting your times. Pop-off were very infrequent, I believe limited to Sportsmen, and there was just one line break, which resulted in the promised public humiliation of Tony Guide. The last round really helped spread the scores, which had been quite close through the day. After the last round we were told that a problem with the scoring program prevented scores from being posted, but we were promised final results the next day. After staying up late that night, the scores were straightened out and were as follows: Tom Kiesling took first, followed by our David Walter, then Phil Barnes, John Jenks and just out of the wood, me. Jose made 7th, and Mark Drela was dead last in Expert. In Sportsman Leszek Zyga took first, Luis Bustamante second, our Bruce Schneider 3rd and Fred Tyra 4th. Tom’s performance needs no comment. Dave Walter continues to prove the point that a good pilot with a familiar plane has a strong edge. In these conditions a heavy plane with a 7037 airfoil should be outclassed by Aegeas and Supras, but Dave can fly any conditions and place at the top, I got what I deserved, but I wonder what happened to Jose and especially Mark. Jose is flying his MH-32 Mantis really well, and I thought Mark was right up with the winners. It is hard to keep up with what is going on at a Man-on-Man contest, especially of you have equipment problems. I was plagued all weekend by failing wiring and was thoroughly chastised by a “helpful” group of bystanders for my lack of shrinkwrap over my solder joints. The only “interesting” incident was when one of the sportsmen’s Manti lost a tail on launch. Sunday’s briefing was “same as yesterday”, but with 10 minute rounds all day. The first round was flown with a thin cloud cover, but that quickly burned off and we had blue skies the rest of the day. Both the first and second rounds had very light lift, but after that we had boomers. At times the lift would be as good as I have ever experienced. At low altitude you had to locate the lift, but once you got to altitude the 10 minutes would be “no problem”. This actually made the 10 minute tasks “bad”. If you missed the thermals in one round you got buried so deep you couldn’t climb out, AND when you caught it, the flying got really boring. Dave Walter became victim to this in the last round. He had been doing great, as usual, and in the last round it was Tom Kiesling, Dave, myself and Tony Guide. Tom launched first and took off in a bee-line. Tony launched and followed Tom. Dave then launched and decided to find his own air because Tom is a very hard person to follow – by the time he reaches the thermal we normally have lost too much altitude to catch it. I was lucky, because Tom found a great thermal before I had come off the zoom. So all I had to do was to fly over and join Tom and Tony. Poor Dave was slammed into the ground and ended up in the middle of the contest results. One bad move, and out of the running. The same happened to Mark Drela, on top all day and then one bad final flight. For “entertainment” we had Paul Bell, the CD, loose radio contact with his plane and get more upset than I have ever seen him before. He is going to have to buy a new antenna. The CD from Saturday, John Hauff, managed to pull the wing hold-down block out on launch and try to spear the guy at the turnarounds, and Tom “landed” his plane in the woods, but did not loose his time because of the absence of field boundaries. So, at the end of the day the results were as follows: In Expert, first, and weekend champ, was Tom “thank God for no field boundaries” Kiesling, followed by Mike Lachowski, Terry Luckenbach and Mark Drela. Then Jose Bruzual, Phil Barnes and myself, followed by Dave Walter. In Sportsman Bruce Schneider took first, followed by Luis Bustamante, Frank Strommer and Pete Nicholson. There was one very interesting incident that I missed. Mike Lachowski and Mark Drela crossed paths during one round. They both fly Supras, and Mark followed the wrong plane. He realized the plane wasn’t responding to his control input, but by then the plane was headed to Mother Earth. He pulled hard up elevator and was able to save the plane.
On the Anker Scale of Contest Difficulty this was semi-hard. On Saturday 6 out of 24 contestants were within 90% of the winner. On Sunday 7 out of 24 made 90%+. A couple of general observations: As we were getting ready Saturday morning I noticed an original Airtronics Legend (the short-nosed one) leaning against a car. That was my first full-house ship and I had to find out who it belonged to. It turned out to be Ed Anderson’s and he had just bought it as an upgrade from his Gentle Lady. A good choice. The Legend didn’t fly that great, and it was really heavy. But it wasn’t a total dog either. Once Ed is comfortable with the Legend he should be ready to go Mantis. It was also great to see Frank Strommer back in the club. I knew him back in the late 80s and early 90s, but he disappeared and is now back. This is the last contest before the ESL End-of-Season contest. The standings are still wide open and the contest next week should be really interesting. I have left travel last. The trip down was the trip from hell, and the trip home was the fastest ever. I guess it averages out. Finally, check out the ESL web site at www.FlyESL.com. It’s a great site! Anker 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.
