F3j / Thermal duration

Open Thermal - Mt Wallace

The first event of the year was run at Mt Wallace and in the end 5pilots braved the windy rainy forcast and luckily the rain stayed away and we had some very enjoyable flights in some very challenging conditions. A huge thanks to the Mt Wallace club for hosting us and putting on a BBQ lunch.

Because we only had electric pilots attend we changed the rules for the day to F5J (This still scores as an OT League event) and we had some timing volunteers so we were able to run 1 group/round with all 5 pilots up at the same time. A huge thanks to the timers who helped, it was much appreciated.

At the end of the day it was congratulations to Jim 1st, Marcus 2nd and Dave 3rd

ot1_mtwallace2019overall.pdf

ot1_mtwallace2019flightscores.pdf

Model Flight Midway Cup Open and f5j Horsham 2019

We had 17 starters for the Model Flight Midway cup held in Horsham, which was also the VMAA state championships in Open Thermal in Victoria.

This year we decided to run an f5j and an open event together, unfortunately we didn’t have the numbers, ie with enough pilots in a heat, to run them at the same time as we're planning to at Jerilderie. Since you could only fly one class or the other, we ended up with 10 pilots flying open thermal with winches, and 7 flying f5j, so we decided to interleave the heats of open and f5j, with every third heat in a round being all up f5j.

We had an international flavour this year with Frank Campbell, an Aussie expat, living in the U.S., and while visiting family here, coming along to compete in f5j.

We had Don Farrar join us in f5j, a keen f5j flyer from NSW, and who has competed in Europe, on an "f5j" event tour of southern Australian States.

It was also good to see Rolf Hedt, finally flying in the f5j event as a host club pilot, rather than just helping organise things.

Weather on the Saturday started very marginal, with a light shower while we were setting up the field first thing, but by the time we got going the weather had improved, and continued to improve over the 2 days. Wind was light to medium strength on the Saturday with the clouds clearing somewhat by the end of the day which made for long lift cylcles, and not very strong lift.

Sunday on the other hand, was great, blue skies, even lighter wind conditions, made for some lower f5j launches but I think people were on the conservative side. So most people stuffed up flights on the Saturday, and with most getting their times on the Sunday.

I want to thank Dan Haskell for CDing and managing to also compete in the open class, and Gerry Carter for managing the scoring side, although he made things easier by going to online scoring for score entry.

Also I'd like to thank the members of the Wimmera Model Aircraft Association for the use of their field, and for the great bbq lunches they provided on both days, and particulary Rolf Hedt for his efforts in organising things locally.

As well thanks to the main event sponsor:

Model Flight, represented by Mike O'Reilly who once again generously provided prizes.

In conclusion, the placings, and congrats, goes to:

Open Thermal and VMAA state champions

1st Darrel Blow

2nd Greg Potter

3rd Simon Morris

and in F5J

1st Andrew Meyer

2nd Jim Houdalakis

3rd Marcus Stent

Finally the perpetual Model Flight Midway Cup for 2019

determined by the aggregate scores of the top flyers from each state from both classes,

and which once again goes to

South Australia!

and it was so close!

regards

Jim

Open Thermal Results Midway Cup via Glider Score

F5J Results Midway Cup via Glider Score

f5j_places

F5j Places 2nd Jim 1st Andrew 3rd Marcus

darrel_1st_in_open

Open Thermal 1st Darrel

greg_2nd

Open Thermal 2nd Greg

simon3rd

Open Thermal 3rd Simon

south_aus_win_midway_cup

Top South Australians, with Midway Cup for another year.

pilots_open_and_f5j

Open and F5j Pilots

pilots_f5j

F5j Pilots

cant_get_closer

Pretty close Greg!

Results Milang International F3j March 2019

Following 2 days of nice conditions for f5j, it was time for f3j.

There was good turnout, with 30 entries, and teams of 4

And as forecast it started overcast and windier than f5j, and the usual first heat hanging in the buoyant air up front, easily making time. The second heat and 3rd heats with just enough buoyant air to make time. By the fourth heat the air was buoyant up high, but you had to pick the correct half of the sky to get into the very light lift early on. By the fifth heat there were strong enough bubbles forming that you could get away in them.

It was forecast to get breezy as the day progressed, which it did for a few rounds, but with distant weather fronts going through, it was doing the opposite to forecast as the day went on,

With conditions lightening off by the end.

Day 2 and blue skies greeted us, with the initial rounds a bit breezy, but that soon developed into gusty thermals with lulls in the intervals in between, all in all the second day was much easier than the first. We flew til early afternoon, where we ended the preliminary rounds, had lunch and the top 8 positioned flyers competed in 3 flyoff rounds.

The top 8 pilots in the flyoffs

1 Joe Wurts

2 Kevin Botherway

3 Jamie Nancarrow

4 Peter Williams

5 Marcus Stent

6 Nick Chabrel

7 Andrew Meyer

8 Jim Houdalakis

As seems to be the usual thing for flyoffs at Milang, the afternoon sea breeze picked up and most ballasted up, and with 15 minute flights, it was going to be an eye sight test.

Most stuffed up the first round, and the remaining 2 rounds weren’t too hard.

So congrats to:

1st Andrew Meyer

2nd Marcus Stent

3rd Kevin Botherway

milang_international_f3j_overall_results_2019.pdf

milang_international_f3j_flyoff_overall_results_2019.pdf

Results Combined Winch and Electric Launch Open Thermal Varms Feb 24

A lovely, light wind, sunny day greeted us at VARMS for the Feb RCGA Combined Open Thermal with Electric competition. A huge thanks to VARMS for hosting us for the day and there were 3 local VARMS members who joined in the fun and quite a few who enjoyed watching from the sidelines.

We had 2 pilots fly winch and 8 fly electric and the issue for the winch launch pilots was the variable wind direction and the sun in the direction of the winchlines.

Jim won the day with superior thermalling using his relatively heavy winch launch Perfection. The bonus was if he missed the lift he could move fast to find the next patch of lift. Well flown Jimmy!

Alan, Bob and David finished 2nd, 3rd and 5th respectively and all had a full set of times and only missed higher places due to their landings.

Marcus finished 4th and was on fire early scoring 5 x 1000 scores and was proving that you can land an electric like a winch launch glider with and average landing of 99 points and he even threw in a perfect flight of 10:00 and 100. His undoing was being too aggressive in the last round when the lift had died and had to come in for a relaunch for an 8:30 flight.

Colin flew his beautiful looking own design model to great effect and had 5 great flights out of 6.

Zdnek, Bruce and Gary all had a some really nice flights and thoroughly enjoyed the day. Bruce had an out landing in the last round and we thought the worst, but luckily found the model sitting perfectly on a grassy knoll.

Gerry unfortunately had a day to forget with some damaged models, but he will be back.

Thanks again to VARMS for the fantastic hospitaliy, it was very much appreciated by all.

Cheers,

Marcus