Wentworth Thermal/AusTour 1 & RCGA Thermal Round 2

This annual competition, already a part of the RCGA Thermal League events, suddenly became more significant. It is first on the list of the LSFs recently announced Austour series of 5 events. There was more at stake than usual.

Wentworth was packed. The Country Music Festival saw the local caravan park full with lots of vans being directed to the 'overflow' area, the racecourse, where we were flying. Every night the three hotels were full with patrons so getting a meal was not necessarily easy or quick. Despite the numbers, the meals came out in good time.

The previous week had seen some horrendous weather striking South Australia and causing a state wide power failure. The hope was that this weather system would abate sufficiently to allow the competition to go ahead over the weekend. And it did, for the Saturday. Sunday was a different story. Given the weather forecast, it would have been understandable if some of the 20 entrants had decided to stay at home but this didn't happen. Everybody came and that was terrific.

These 'away' competitions are as much about the socialising as well as the flying so lots of pilots and partners met up for dinner on both the Friday and Saturday nights. Very convivial, enjoyable and interesting.

Saturday was a great day for competition with seven rounds completed plus half of round eight. The field was the greenest, wettest and softest that we have ever seen, but still OK for cars to drive out to drop off all the gear. The wind strength was very flyable and well within limits but still caught out a few pilots downwind, including myself. This was a bad thing as the terrain downwind was all trees and water. Luckily there was very little model damage as a result of outlandings, no doubt helped by the very soft, rain soaked, soil.

When flying started, and in fact for most of the day, thermals were difficult to find and tricky to follow. Despite this, most flight groups ended with the time being flown out by the winner. But quite a few times, the next placed pilot was well short of the winning time and this spread the scores, a lot. Only one pilot largely avoided this issue and flew out his time for the whole competition.

Theo Arvanitakis launches Mike O'Reilly's Pike Perfection (Photos courtesy of Terry Dunn - thanks Terry for the great snaps)

Pike Perfection on approach (Photos courtesy of Terry Dunn)

We broke for lunch at around 12:30pm and went off to the pavilion where a buffet lunch of meat and salads was all set out. Plently of good food for everybody. This was followed by fruit salad and ice-cream! Tea, coffee and soft drinks also available.

We finished up at around 5pm and taking a lead from us, the AFL Grand Final finished at the same time! Pretty happy about the Western Bulldogs winning. We all met up for dinner and to review the scores so far. Unfortunately there was a glitch in the scoring program (all scores had been entered correctly) so the results that we saw didn't give the right placings. This issue was fixed next morning.

Paul Moorfield with a nice launch (Photos courtesy of Terry Dunn)

Another approach shot (Photos courtesy of Terry Dunn)

Sunday's forecast was for strong winds in the early morning, rapidly increasing and thunderstorms developing by the afternoon. Not very promising. Unfortunately the forecast was correct and after canvassing the various pilots the decision was taken to call off the competition. So the results were based on the seven completed rounds.

Everybody packed up and gathered in the pavilion for the results and presentations. There was a prize for everybody as well as a random draw for the major prize and a Model Flight voucher.

After the mud (there was no dust) settled we had

1st Tom Dupuche on 6988.5

2nd Greg Potter on 6866.7

3rd Nick Chabrel on 6857.1

Thanks once again to Darrel Blow, Garry Whitfield, Jennifer, Michell, Faye and all the other helpers for putting on a great competition. And thanks to Terry Dunn for the great photos taken from https://www.facebook.com/Dunn-Photographics-1189233391090724/.  Much appreciated.

overallresults_wentworth.pdf
teamresults_wentworth.pdf
flightscores_wentworth.pdf
landingscores_wentworth.pdf

Cheers,

Gerry Carter