Open f3j / f5j international Milang S.A. March 2017

Hi, thought I'd put together my road trip summary,

set off a day early, on Thursday, this year because I wanted to fly the f5j event on the Friday afternoon, and didn't fancy a 4am departure from Melbourne.

Arrived at the ssl field in Milang S.A. late afternoon after 81/2 hour drive to find the 4 Kiwi entrants had already setup camp there. An Entertaining bunch, and I reckon I could hear Len's voice from the Motel. They were enjoying the warm weather, medium strength wind and doing some bungee launching of f3j planes, so I decided to join in for a handfull of flights, thanks to Kev for the throws.

Then it was off to the motel to checkin and then was off with the gang for a fine meal down the road at Sails on Clayton Bay, which, as previous years, didn't disappoint.

Friday morning and we arrive at the field to just a perfect start to the day, weather wise, and it's time to trim and tweak and practice landings with the f5j models, ready for the afternoons competition.

Right off the bat, there is light lift around and with my f5j light-strong perfection, which is maybe on the heavy side (1.9 kg) for the conditions, I can still slowly clmb out. So i figure by the time the comp starts in the afternoon the lift will be huge, and it turned out I wasn't wrong. The rest of the morning was the usual meet and greet and catchups as more people arrived.

The conditions stayed pretty light all day, and once the f5j comp started, the launch heights got lower and lower. the Kiwis set the benchmark lead by Joe Wurts, Kevin Botherway and Peter Williams. Of coarse the 75 meter landing zero score rule was getting a fair work out as well.when pilots pushed the low launches too far for conditions they were in. It was good to see Theo Arvanitakis, in maybe his first f5j event, even though one armed with a broken collarbone, keeping up with the Kiwis on the minimal launches and greate flights,

(must've been my throws).

Dave Pratley was doing well too until some outlandings cost him dearly. As for myself, even though I got my times and landings, conservative launch heights only got me 5th.

I think for me, the standout flight was one where many chased a thermal that had blown through, only to see Kevin at 19 a meter launch height, ie a quarter most pilots height, fly over my head, chasing the same thermal and climbing out to win the heat.

Congratulations to the F5J placegetters: 1. Joe Wurts 2. Theo Arvanitakis 3. Kevin Botherway

Friday night and we ended up with takeaway, and drinks back at the Milang Motel, and sitting around hearing about the interesting stuff Joe W had been working on, closing out a great day.

Saturday, and the first day of f3j, we arrive at the field and it's calm and heavily overcast, with the radar showing a bunch of shower / rain fronts on the way.

To cut a long story short, it was very low lift, if not dead conditions for the whole day. Every time you'd think conditions were improving, another shower would come through. It was perfect conditions for the lightest of aircraft, and pilots good at hanging in minimal conditions. Safe to say most of us struggled. At least my planes got a wash.

Saturday evening and the club did something different and had a bbq at the field (luckily had stopped raining by this point) and which was very enjoyable evening.

Sunday and it looked like more of the same conditions in the morning. Eventually the sky began to open up, and I think I finally started to do some actual thermal turns in lift in the last couple of preliminary rounds.

After lunch, time for the flyoffs for the six top pilots, and 3 rounds to decide a winner. We were helping Gerry in the flyoffs, against Joe, Kevin, David, Nick, and Andrew. By this time, the wind had picked up, maybe medium to strong when lift was going through. So it was big lift and big sink time. Gerry did well getting into the lift, but suffered with poor visibility against the cloudy conditions. My advice, dont fly yellow planes in cloudy conditions.

Joe and Kev managed to chase down a thermal and got their times in the first heat. A few tried to follow but left it too late.

Second heat and Joe once again got away with a thermal, Kev tried his luck down wind but ended up landing out in the next paddock, Dave managed to hang in there and get his time.

In the last heat, because of his lead on the others, Joe decided to play it safe and go around to maximise the crosswind conditions, and popped off, so relaunched, and thats how he dropped the points, since most made the time in the last heat.

Congratulations to the F3J placegetters: 1. Joe Wurts 2. Nick Chabrel 3. Kevin Botherway

Thanks to the organisers at the SSL club South Australia, for putting on another great event, and looking forward to next year.

regards

Jim Houdalakis