After terrible weather the previous Sunday, the 24th November proved to be a fantastic backup day for our competition. Fine, mostly sunny and with light to moderate winds.

The forecast wind direction was from south through to south west. Of course it was nothing like that. We had mainly easterly winds with a smattering of everything else. Thermals were sometimes elusive and sink cycles could be long lasting. To make things even more interesting the wind direction or strength (or both) could vary dramatically in the last minute before landing. Overall, perfect competition soaring weather where everybody lost some points due to the conditions. One pilot dropped out after five rounds due to some minor landing damage.

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Around 25 pilots made the trip to Wentworth NSW for the two day thermal comp held on 25-26 October 2014. A few arrived in time to practice on the Friday and had a get together that night.

On the Saturday we had really good, but occassionally tough and challenging conditions and that always makes for a good thermal gliding competition. It was pretty hot and sunny but the wind strength was never a problem. But trying too hard was for some and resulted in outlandings at great distance for a few.

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12 pilots enjoyed the great weather and Northern Flying Group hospitality on Sunday with both hand launch glider (F3K) and electric thermal (F5J) being flown.

A huge thank you to the Northern flying Group (NFG) for both the exclusive use of the field and the great work the volunteers did to feed us for both Breakfast and Lunch.  The Egg & Bacon Sandwiches and the Hamburgers were delicious! It was much appreciated by all who attended and this event has become a highlight in our calendar. Thanks again to everyone involved at the NFG.

Also a big thank-you to Marcus, Alan and Russell for running the events.  Reports and results below.

F3K Round #2

Well it was the first time in living memory it was not blowing a gale at the State Flying Field and 6 pilots made the most of the magnificent conditions.

Jamie Cannon made the trip from Sydney to compete and took an early lead after the first 3 rounds and was reading the conditions better than everyone else.

Again we had Jon's jar of pain (although there were many references to Pandora and her Box thrown in for good measure) to randomly select the tasks.  It was a lot of fun.

The conditions were a little fickle at times and it made finding lift difficult, but most of the time it was around somewhere, so it rewarded those who were on the ball.

Jamie being new to flying Poker lost some points but learnt some of the finer points and will be much better next time around.

Tom was slowly sorting out his Stobel V3 and was improving with every flight. He managed a well flown 3:45 and 4:00 in 'Last 2' and you could have sworn he had won the lottery. Well flown Tom.

Jon, who had a poor start, was now putting together consistent 1,000 point rounds with some great reads and some low level saves.

I stuffed up one of my 3x3 flights by landing out and was sitting in 3rd going into the last Round of AULD x3. My reads had been slowly getting better all day and I  pulled out a great first flight and buried the field by over 1:15 and with both Jon and Jamie landing out, it meant I had picked up a lot of points. The Second flight saw Jamie and I get 3:00 and in the Third I landed (almost too) safe at 1:55 with Jon, Jamie and Tim getting the 3:00.

It was a very tense finish with none of us quite sure how it was going to end up... In the end I pipped Jamie by just 0.9 of a point, but it could have gone either way.

Congratulations to:

1st  Marcus 6786.5

2nd Jamie    6785.6

3rd Jon         6575.0

4th Tim        5546.7

5th Jim         4992.2

6th Tom       4310.9

f3k2_flightscores.pdf

f3k2_overallresults.pdf

6 happy pilots

Jamie travelled down from Sydney.  Thanks Jamie!!

The days winner by 0.9 of a point!! Well done Marcus.

Thanks again to Jamie for making the effort to come so far and to everyone for making it such a fun day.

Roll on the next one!

Cheers,

Marcus

F5J Round #1

9 pilots lined up for an afternoon of electric thermal duration.  The numbers showing consistent interest building in this new variation of thermal flying.

A great day was had for the first F5j event for the season. Conditions were calm to light winds with thermals of all sizes from small and weak to huge.

Even more so than usual, it became clear it didn’t matter really which size model you were flying, the air you flew it in was the biggest factor.

We had Radians head to head with 4 meter Maxas all showing that F5j is the big leveler. Just fly anything and have fun.

Congratulations to:

1st  Jim           3882

2nd David       3712

3rd Tim           3636

f5j_1_overall_results.xls

Our next event is at Diggers on Sun. Nov. 30. the week before that is an electric height limited event on Sat. Nov. 22. See below.

varms_ales.doc

Hi all,
A beautiful sunny and unusually calm spring day greeted us for the first round in the RCGA Open Thermal league for the new season.
Usually this time of year means flying in a hurricane and full ballast but not so today, our biggest issue was wind direction, where we made the mistake of listening to the forecast, and managed to be setup in the wrong direction for downwind launches all day long. However with the generally calm conditions this wasn't a big issue. It wasn't always easy to find lift, and occasionally the cycles were quite far apart, so i think everyone had at least one get out of jail flight from down low. 

Despite the rain earlier in the week the ground was very hard, making for big bounces if coming in too fast and steep or big slides if coming in too fast and shallow. I watched Theo impressively and loudly bounce off the peg holding down the spot to land at 96. After pulling a flap servo out of his perfection, Dave Hobby flew his f3b pike precision very well, in light conditions, in his last few flights, until an unfortunate slide through landing. All was relatively straight forward until the very last heat,  when a 10 knot sea breeze kicked in, and the last heat of pilots had to launch downwind. It was quite the challenge to get any sort of launch height.  Rod managed to get the best launch and surfed the breeze and fast moving lift to win the heat.

It was good to see our newest member to join our ranks Bob Wilson steadily improve as the day progressed to put in some solid flights by the end of the day. 

Final standings were:

1st Jim Houdalakis      6992.8

2nd Theo Arvanitakis  6984.2

3rd Rod Watkins         6975.5

openthermal1_overall_results_14092014.pdf

openthermal1_flight_scores_14092014.pdf

PS Thanks to everyone who helped me out running the event, 

Jim Houdalakis

RCGA

Field at Lunch time

Theo, Jim, Rod and young Harrison Watkins laying out the landing tape

Hugh, Jim, John, David

First comp of the RCGA season to clear the cobwebs, with a beautiful day's flying F3K competition. Five of us made the trip to Longwood, 1.5 hour drive North of Melbourne, (1.5 hours South for Dave and I (Jim) who spent Saturday in Cobram flying scale)

So here's Hugh Blackburn's report...

Round 1 at Longwood - a fantastic day's flying with beautiful weather: light Northerly breeze up to 4 m/s max, sun all day, skies mostly blue. Newcomer to our local F3K comp but an experienced glider guider, Dave Milward, arrived with a trailer full of scale sailplanes and an XXlite - he is the first person I can think of who has made the 'reverse transition' from scale to handlaunch! We look forward to seeing you again Dave. Marcus had a very impressive first outing with his new Aerial and carried the day with it. Well done Marcus! See the Aerial thread for his comments.

Scores and rankings after 1 drop, 9 rounds flown.

1. Marcus Stent 7997/100.
2. Jon Day 7702/96.3
3. Hugh Blackburn 7607/95.1
4. David Milward 7321/91.6
5. Jim Houdalakis 6859/85.8

Hugh

PS: Jon CD'd and we drew the tasks to be flown at random from a jar full of beer bottle tops. That added some spice, can recommend it.

f3k1 Longwood flight-scores 31 aug 2014

f3k1 Longwood overall-results 31 aug 2014

Winner Marcus and his Aerial DLG

Dave with XXLite DLG and Hugh

Jim and John with Snipe DLG

John on landing approach

Marcus with his Pike Superior that he used to win the Open Thermal League

It has been a great series of RCGA Leagues this year and a big thank you to all those who participated and made it so much fun.

Congratulations to all the winners:

Grand Champion League:

1st Marcus stent

2nd Jim Houdalakis

3rd Tim Lennon

2013-14_grandchampion_league_final.pdf

Open Thermal League:

1st Marcus stent

2nd Jim Houdalakis

3rd Alan Mayhew

2013-14_thermal_league_final.pdf

F3K Handlaunch League:

1st Marcus stent

2nd JonDay

3rd Hugh Blackburn

2013-14_f3k_league_final.pdf

F3B Multitask League:

1st Gerry Carter

2nd Marcus Stent

3rd David Pratley

2013-14_f3b_league_final.pdf

F5J Electric Glider League:

1st David Pratley

2nd Alan Mayhew

3rd Jim Houdalakis

2013-14_f5j_league_final.pdf

Thanks for making our job as the (outgoing) comimttee so easy and a big welcome to the new Committee of Gerry, Jim and Tom.

See you next season,

Marcus, Gerry and Tim

State Thermal Championship winners, 2nd Bernie sizer, 1st Jim Houdalakis, 3rd Daniel Haskel

It was a cool windy day with very light and patch lift, which lead to a big spreadin the scores. It was Jim who read the conditions the best and came away with a convincing win.

1st Jim Houdalakis

 2nd Bernie Sizer

3rd Daniel Haskel

statechampsth_june14-overall_results.pdf

statechampsth_june14-flight_scores.pdf

Berinies brace of Pikes

Tom's pits, a Pike Perfection, Pike Perfect and Fosa Lift

A very nice looking Maxa