We had a warm day for the first thermal competition of 2016. OK, it was HOT. But that didn't stop everybody having a good time.

Our CD, Daniel Haskell (pictured above), had us flying to a 10 minute thermal task in 11 minutes working time. This changed the game in that sandbagging wasn't really possible. And, in the event of a pop off or a line break, there was a good chance that at least some potential flight time would be lost. In our situation, where pilots were given extra preparation time if needed, it didn't save any time over the 10 minute flight in 12 minutes rules. It would be different in a larger, longer and more rigidly structured competition.

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Results for F3K 2 (October) and F3K 3 (November).

F3K 2 - AsiaPacific 2016 Selection Trials

F3K #2 was the selection trials for the Asia Pacific Open (APO) to be held in March next year. The APO is an open event for anyone to attend, but there is also a team element to the event as well. Australia has now selected its team and Congratulations to 1st Jamie Cannon, 2nd Marcus Stent and 3rd David Milward! Jamie flew exceptionally well and had a convincing win. Well done Jamie!

NOTE: Entries are still open for the APO and more details can be found on the RCGA/EVENTS/F3K page. At the moment there are over 30 entries including teams from China, HongKong, Taiwan, Singapore and the World Championship winning New Zealand team of Alex Hewson, Joe Wurts and KevinBotherway. An event not to be missed by any enthusiast.

Dave Milward, Jamie Cannon, Jon Day and Marcus Stent

3k2_2015-flightscores.pdf

f3k2_2015-overallresults.pdf

F3K 3 - State field

F3K 3 was held at the State field and for the first time since I can remeber it was not blowing a gale. A huge thanks to the Northern flying Groupfor the use of the field and for cooking an excellent lunch.

Congratulations to 1st Marcus, 2nd Jim (a great result Jim, well flown!) and 3rd Jon.

A fun day was had by all.

Marcus, Hugh, Dave, Jon, Jim

f3k_3_201516-flight_scores.pdf

f3k_3_201516-overall_results.pdf

The first weekend of December 2015 saw a group of 22 pilots head to Horsham, Victoria for the 2^nd annual Modelflight Midway Cup and Victoria State Thermal Championships event. Firstly a big thank-you to the groups that made the event possible.

The Wimmera Model Aero Association (WMAA) with Vic and Rolf and the team providing amazing hospitality over the weekend keeping us fed and watered.  Thanks guy for another great weekend!

Modelflight RC and Mike O’Reilly for sponsoring the event.  Modelflight has a long history of sponsorship of gliding events throughout the country and support for the Midway Cup was again amazing.  Mike supports us so please support Modelflight RC.

Gerry Carter for his GliderScore program and help setting this up for the event.  The program can now announce pilot names for each round and group meaning the event almost runs itself.  Thanks Gerry!!

Daniel Haskell, Jim Houdalakis and Marcus Stent for their help running the event.  It was a great RCGA team effort.

Pilots for 2015

This year was the 2^nd year of what is now a regular event. It was born out of the Modelflight Cup (an event held at SSL park in South Australia) and the Victorian State Thermal Championships (held in Melbourne).  Bring the two together in a Midway location of Horsham (thanks to Ziggy Kusiak’s connections with the town) and you have the Modelflight Midway Cup and Victoria State Thermal Championships. The Midway Cup is a state vs state event with the scores of the top 6 pilots making up the state’s score.  The outright winner of the event would take home the Victorian State Champion trophy.  The competition was flown to the draft thermal rules, 10 minutes in 12 minute working time with 100 points for landing on offer and no dropped scores.

Last year saw high winds but this year the Horsham crew turned down the wind and turned up the heat.  The winds were light to moderate for the weekend and didn’t pose any problems.  But it was HOT!! 38c on the Saturday and Sunday. The event started on Friday the 4^th December with free practice at the field and a number of people took advantage to practice their launching and landing ahead of round 1 group 1 on Saturday.  Defending state champion David Hobby made the trip from the USA where he now lives to fly the competition – thanks David for coming out a great effort.  Pilot registration was Friday night at the Exchange Hotel and it didn’t take long for some friendly state vs state banter between SA and VIC to start.  All in good fun with both states enjoying this event now slotted in between the Mildura Open in October and Milang F3J International in March. Daniel Haskell did a great job preparing the team kits with scorecards and draw for pickup on Friday night and ticked everyone off with their FAI cards.  The Friday night is a part of a gliding competition that I really enjoy.  A chance to get out of the city and catch up with all the pilots, swap stories since the last competition and have a beer.

Saturday morning and we were up early to assess the wind direction and setup the flightline.  The forecast was for north east moving to north west so we believed the forecast and setup to the north and this proved to be a good call.  There were some crosswind launches but most of the day was launching into wind.  It didn’t take long for everyone to setup, cars off the field a quick pilot briefing and before you knew it round 1 group 1 was on 2 minutes prep time and we were off.  By 9am when we kicked off it was already quite warm but the morning conditions still proved difficult and a number of the top ten pilots dropped time.  With no dropped score allowed these days you have to carry all scores with you which makes it interesting.  As the day progressed the thermals got big and so did the sink.  You were either going up quick or coming down fast!!  A lunch break at 12:30 was welcome relief from the heat and the Wimmera club put on a great BBQ for us.  Thanks guys!! The day proved to be very hot and a few pilots made the smart decision to sit out the hottest part of the day.  38c in the shade but around 50c in the sun!!  The heat brought dust devils that luckily passed to the left or right of the pits. At the end of a very hot day we’d flown our planned 7 rounds and it was back to the hotel to cool off before dinner at a local Thai Restaurant.

Sunday greeted us with overcast conditions and the first heats of the day were again tricky.  The day continued to be hard with some groups requiring 10 minutes to win and others 7 or 8 being enough.  We returned from another welcome lunch break to fly our final 1 and a half rounds and wrapped up the event at about 2pm having flown 12 rounds over the two days. 

So when the dust settled it was Victoria who retained the Modelflight Midway Cup.  But South Australia who took home the Victorian State Championships with Nick Chabrel.

Final Results 

Modelflight Midway Cup – Winning state: Victoria

Victorian State Thermal Championships

1^st Nick Chabrel (SA) – 11987

2^nd Marcus Stent (VIC) – 11952

3^rd Bernie Sizer (VIC) – 11816

Download results here

mfmc_overall.pdf

mfmc_flights.pdf

mfmc_landings.pdf

mfmc_teams.pdf

The top three: L to R - Marcus, Nick and Bernie

Nick flew a flawless competition from round 1 and never looked like making a mistake.  Well done Nick!! 

John Tonks a relative new comer to competition thermal flying flew well all weekend to come home 7^th,  David Hobby made the trip from the USA and was using some older models with his current ones still in the states and finished 8^th, Simon Morris the only person to have flown every Modelflight Midway Cup and Jerilderie LSF tournament was 10^th, Bob Wilson and Ian Faulkner sat out some rounds due to the heat on Saturday but both finished with some great flights on Sunday.  Bob flew 943, 982 and finished with a 995 and Ian flew 905 and finished with a 965.

Big sky country

Double World Champ (2004 and 2006) made the trip from the USA

Marcus Stent arrives for another 100 points

Theo will represent Australia at the 2016 F3J Worlds in Solvenia

So there it is over for another year.  Thanks to all those that supported what was a great event.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone from the RCGA committee.

See you next year in Horsham on the first weekend of December – 3^rd and 4^th December 2016!!

Cheers,

Tom Dupuche

Dear All,

Please see the list of entries here horshamentries2015v2.pdf

I will be running the draw very shortly - please let me know if you can see anyone missing.

Regards,

Tom Dupuche 

After the previous f5j event got blown out, it was good to have a calm and sunny afternoon for RCGA round 1 of  f5j electric glider  at the VMAA, state field in daraweit-guim. It surprised me, since the State Field  location is notoriously windy.

After a great lunch kindly prepared by the Northern Flying Group, we got stuck into the flying. In contrast to the morning's f3k competition's strong and tight thermals, the afternoon was dominated by big broad thermals which softened in strength as the day progressed,

David had some bad luck with a thermal willy willy damaging one of his 2 planes before we even started, He also had persistent power issues, which with the accompanying low starts, helped him win several heats.

Wren had his brand new f5j Kappa  35 which looks impressive but needed more sorting out by Wren.

Working the tree lines payed off some of the  time, but with the trees not that close, of course it meant needing good depth perception.

Bob flew his Ava to great effect although he did managing to land on the wrong side of the trees one heat, unscathed.

Marcus with another new plane, a home build by Alan Mayhew, called a Preigo. Alan may be regretting selling it, because Marcus put in an amazing flight in the back corner with it, where the tree lines meet, alternating above and below tree height, in the end winning the heat.

Unfortunately attempting to emulate his low level escape on his last flight, landed Marcus in the top branches of a 25 metre tall gum tree.

So once we were finished and packed up, it was off to see if we could get it out of the tree.

Thankfully with a squid pole, (usually reserved for a wind direction streamer) and some winch line Dave Pratley managed to rescue the plane undamaged.

Dave retrieving Marcus's glider  see video here

Concratulations to:

Marcus Stent 1st

Bob Wilson 2nd

David Pratley 3rd

f5j_overallresults_rcga_rnd1_nov_2015_statefield.pdf     f5j_flightscores_rcga_rnd1_nov_2015_statefield.pdf

Regards and Happy Flying

Jim Houdalakis

Fishing for Planes

A relieved Marcus with Dave's Help.

Alans pulsar and Bobs Ava

Daves Explorers

Wren and his new Kappa f5j

Alan helping Marcus with his f5j logger, Jim with his red pulsar

2015 ENTRY FORM mfmc_entry_2015.pdf

----------------------

Dear All,

Entries are rolling in for the Modelflight Midway Cup and Victoria State Champs on 5th and 6th December in Horsham, Victoria. We have 25 pilots either entered or nominated in a team.  South Australia have strong numbers so are making a big bid to win the Midway Cup back!

If you have not yet entered please get your entries in soon.  Entries close 27th November to give us time to create the draw and prepare the weekend before.  Please note: We're happy to receive entry details in email text as long as you include all the information from the entry form and pay via EFT.

Bulletin #1 includes pilots entered or nominated in a team and the schedule for the weekend.  We have booked at Thai Basil restaurant for Saturday night dinner.  http://www.thaibasil.com.au. For booking purposes we are assuming everyone will attend.  Please let us know via email ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) if you are not attending or if you have a guest by 27th November so we can finalise numbers at the restaurant.

Click here for Bulletin #1 - mfmc bulletin 1.pdf

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Horsham.

Cheers,

Tom Dupuche

Almost perfect conditions greeted us for round 3 of the RCGA open thermal competition at Digger's Rest.
I say almost because the wind couldn't decide on a direction, but sure enough avoided the forecast direction for most of the day,
and hence the direction in which the winches were set up.
But seeing as there wasn't much wind to speak of, it didn't make much of a difference.

We had a few away, Gerry touring Mexico, Bernie full sizing, and Al getting hitched the previous day (don't know if that's a valid reason to miss a comp ;-) . 

It was great to see:

• Graham Norman up and out and competing after quite a while off his feet, and doing some of his best flying.
• Marcus with a brand new, modern, and task appropriate plane, doing a great job of setting it up during the day, without impacting his results.
• Bob's launches improving over the day,
• consistent performances by Tom 
• Theo working on those team f3j 9:59's

On to results, and with such nice weather the spread of scores was pretty tight

Congratulations to:

Marcus Stent 1st

Tom Dupuche 2nd

Theo Arvanitakis 3rd

 openthermal_3_overall_results_08112015.pdf      openthermal_3_flight_scores_08112015.pdf  

Thanks to everyone's help in running and score entering for the comp,

See you at the next event in two weeks, f3k followed by f3j in the afternoon at the State Flying Field,

and don't forget your entries for the State Championships/Model Flight Midway Cup Open Thermal competition in Horsham, (we need catering numbers)

regards and happy flying

Jim Houdalakis

The Wentworth event was quite memorable.

Quite a few pilots arrived on the Friday for some practice and conditions were pretty warm. But this led to the formation of localised storms and we had one hit very suddenly towards the end of the day. There was no rain with this storm but the wind strength was awesome. Thanks to the quick action on the part of the people on the field a lot of models that could have just been blown away were saved.

Saturday morning saw quiet conditions and after a hot breakfast at the field the event got underway. I will let the scores tell the story. Sometimes it was easy and other times it was tough, really tough to stay up. One bad flight could see you drop quite a few positions. To add some interest we had a storm come through around the middle of the day complete with rain this time but furtunately the CD saw this one coming and stopped early for lunch. So everybody got their models off the field before any of this happened. Conditions after the break were quite different. Much more humid than before, and hotter. This made for 'interesting' thermal conditions for the rest of the day. Also, another storm threatened but apart from short delays to wait for light showers to pass, the event rolled on with six full rounds flown. Finally, the rather tired pilots got together at the Crown Hotel for dinner.

Sunday was another day of tough conditions and practically nobody managed to master the conditions every time that they flew. We saw gliders outlanding, missing landing points all-together, some narrowly managing to get back to the field by flying around trees and under power lines. This caused the rankings from the previous evening to change, a lot. With 10 rounds flown everybody packed up and went off to relax and have lunch (provided) while the scores were finalised and the prizes and trophies organised.

After all that, congratulations to

and many thanks to the Wentworth Shire, Darrel Blow, Garry Whitfield and all the helpers behind the scenes for putting on yet another great event.

(Images courtesy of Dan Haskell)

wentworth-overall_results.pdf
wentworth-team_results.pdf
wentworth-flight_scores.pdf
wentworth-landing_results.pdf

(images courtesy of Trevor Schultz)