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)

The 2015 - 2016 thermal season got off to a good start on Sunday 13 September.  8 pilots made the trip out to diggers rest and the day started with light winds and a beautiful 24 C. Much better than the forecast had been saying!!

8 pilots allowed us to run 2 groups of 4 which meant we pushed through the rounds quickly at a round every 30 minutes.  The first half of the day saw big thermals and 10 minutes being needed to win the round but after lunch the wind picked up and the last two rounds turned out to be pretty tough.

We managed 8 rounds and at the end of the day the top three were:

1st Theo Arvanitakis - 7946

2nd Marcus Stent - 7879

3rd Jim Houdalakis - 7049

13092016thermaloverall.pdf

13092015thermalflightst.pdf

Well done to Theo who had 7 x 1000 and a 946 - a great result as he prepares for the 2016 world champs. Marcus was close behind and Jim was the best of the rest 800 points behind 2nd.

A great day thanks to everyone for making it easy to run. The next thermal event is in Mildura on 10/11 October - the first of the "Grand Tours" for 2015 - 2016.  

See you there!!