Fourteen pilots attended the penultimate thermal league event for the season and despite wind and rain on the days preceding, the forecast for the day was for light winds and no rain, which thankfully is how it turned out. It was great to welcome Jaime Cannon and Clive Warman who made the journey from NSW (Sydney and Newcastle) and to see Graham Norman dust off his models and get them in the air after a hiatus for most of the year. We all looked forward to getting some serious competition air time and fine tuning before Jerilderie, only two weeks away!

13 pilots in front of the camera with Marcus Stent taking the shot

Conditions proved to be challenging, and achieving 10 minutes was not always easy. However the best pilots on the day managed to work the conditions well and find enough lift to get their time. Most of the models flown were Perfections, Maxas or Explorers, as seems to be usual nowadays. I wonder if there are any other new model designs to be unveiled at the upcoming world championships? It was great to see Dave Pratley’s very light new Explorer 3 making the most of some low level lift and saving himself from a dropper. It was also good to see Graham flying his Icon 2 smoothly and beautifully in the challenging conditions.

Jamie Cannon hitting the spot with Clive Warman timing.  Jamie has represented Australia at the F3K worlds and great to see Jamie getting into F3J/Open Thermal.  No doubt he will be fighting it out at the top very soon. A huge thanks to Jamie and Clive for making the trip down!

Bob Wilson with his Maxa.  Bob finished the day strongly with his last 3 rounds all 960+.

After six rounds there was less that 30 points between the top three places and 12 points between 1st and 2nd. It came down to the last round to decide the competition. Consistent and high quality flying by Tom Dupuche finally gave him the edge over Marcus, and Tom, emerged the victor for the second competition in a row! Gerry finished third separated by only 26 points or 0.37% of the winners score!

Tom Dupuche's Pike Perfection Light Strong being launch by Daniel Haskell.  The working time clock showing 10:58 left...only a little bit of sand bagging!

Daniel Haskell's Pike Perfection Extreme.

Hugh Blackburn with his Fosa Lift.  He flew it near the end of the day and easliy got his time in very light conditions. 

The completion ran very smoothly due in no small part to the incredible Glider Score program designed and built in downtown Glen Iris by Gerry Carter. But this competition was even more professional with the use of the new RCGA working time LED display also made Gerry – great work and thanks from all of us.

So at the end of the day it was:

1^st Place Tom Dupuche  - 6991

2^nd Place Marcus Stent - 6984

3^rd Place Gerry Carter - 6965

thermal9_overall.pdf

thermal_9flights.pdf

Tom's win sees the Thermal League go down to the wire.  With Marcus ahead but Tom still in the hunt at the final round in Jerilderie.

See you all at Jerilderie – Daniel Haskell

April 10th saw 7 pilots head to Ballarat Model Club's new field to fly round 8 of the RCGA thermal league.  As always the Ballarat Club turned on fantastic hospitality including treating us to a great lunch. Many thanks to the club for hosting us - we always enjoy the trip to Ballarat.

The forecast was for wind and it didn't disappoint.  When we arrived at about 9am the wind was up to about 8 knots but by the time we got underway it was closer to 15 knots and climbed to the forecast of 18 or so knots.  Needless to say it was a tricky day and there were a number of out landings during the day.  Gerry neatly landing on the bank of the nearby dam twice. Lucky the dam was low!!

Don Woodward joined the fun having flown F3B in WA many moons ago and it didn't take Don any time getting back into the swing of things.  At the end of round 3 and at the lunch break Don was leading with 3,000 points, Daniel Haskell was 2nd and Marcus Stent 3rd.

The afternoon conditions continued to mix things up and the wind tried pilots abilities to make it back to the landing zone.  When it was all done and dusted after 7 rounds the results were are follows:

1st Tom Dupuche

2nd Bernie Sizer

3rd Don Woodward

overall-2.pdf

flightscores.pdf

Congrats to the top three and a great return to competition model flying by Don.    

Again a big thank-you to the Ballarat club and the help given by their members that allowed us to fly 2 groups per round.  Particularly to keen glider pilot George who called for us all day!!

See you at the next one - 29 May at Diggers Rest.

We were fortunate to have excellent weather over the two days. Hot, but not too hot. Humid but no rain. A breeze, but never too strong. Pilots came from as far away as New Zealand so it was great to have them there.

Seven rounds and half of round 8 were flown on the Saturday. The 12 preliminary rounds were completed and followed by three fly-off rounds on the Sunday.

Everybody was well catered for with the van coming out from the Milang Bakery each day and with water and soft drinks available on the field.

Scoring was handled by Manny Stoupos and we must all thank him for doing that. This took away the distraction of having pilots try to keep this up to date as well as flying.

The pilots were organised (by themselves) into teams of four, so everybody was busy for practically the whole time. Not much time for socialising during the flying, but made up for this during the lunch break and also by meeting up for dinner each evening.

At the end of the preliminary rounds (with each pilot's worst score not counted) the top seven pilots went on to fly three 15 minute fly-off rounds.

They were:

- Joe Wurts (10,993.52)

- Kevin Botherway (10,987.44)

- Nick Chabrel (10,981.26)

- Mike O'Reilly (10,973.18)

- Theo Arvanitakis (10,968.04)

- Jim Houdalakis (10,944.03)

- Jamie Namcarrow (10,898.47)

Prelim-Overall  Prelim-FlightScores   Prelim-Landings   Teams

By this time there was a healthy wind and visibility was reduced due to the hazy sky.

In the fly-off some pilots went a very, very long way downwind to the extent that they walked some distance from the landing spots to keep their gliders in view. This didn't work out too well for one pilot who had a long walk to retrieve his glider.

The final result was

1. Joe Wurts (2,994.38)

2. Mike O'Reilly (2,971.99)

3. Theo Arvanitakis (2,971.79)

Final-Results    FlyOff-Results   FlyOff-FlightScores

Congratulations to Joe Wurts and to all who took part. Particular thanks go to those who put in the effort behind the scenes to make this a great competition for everybody. Thank you for that.