F3J - Thermal duration Result and Report Open Thermal 14/01/2018 - Diggers Rest
Result and Report Open Thermal 14/01/2018 - Diggers Rest
RCGA Thermal Sunday 14th January 2018
The weather leading up to the Sunday had been pretty miserable. In fact there was heavy rain overnight and still patches of rain and drizzle around on the drive to the field. It was pretty dull however the weather forecast was for things to improve and that’s exactly what happened. I met Eddie, the property manager, opening up the paddock for us and to my surprise and delight he told me to go a bit further to the mown area! It is fantastic that he did this for us without being asked and shows what a good relationship we have with him.
Ten pilots arrived with one coming along just to fly his F5J gliders off to the side. So, nine pilots for the competition including Terry Passalaqua who came all the way from Bendigo. Thanks for coming Terry. All agreed to try out a new feature in GliderScore that systematically assigns helpers to the pilots in each group as part of the draw process. This means that everybody gets involved with everybody else and pilots never had to find their own helpers. It was a great success. The rain and drizzle stopped at about the time that we all arrived at the field, but the wind did not stop for practically the whole day. In the morning we had to cope with overcast skies and cold southerly winds. In fact only one 10 minute flight was achieved in the first two rounds but this changed with round 3 when all flight groups had 10 minute flights. Gerry broke a switch on his transmitter when it caught on his tarpaulin and so chose to sit out round 1 and concentrate on re-assigning the broken switch functions to another switch. As this was the primary mode changing switch, it made switching modes during launch a little bit difficult! After 3 rounds we had Al Mayhew and Tom Dupuche tied for first place. Both on 3000 points. The afternoon’s conditions saw that change. As the afternoon progressed the cloud cover broke up so that we had individual clouds and, eventually, no clouds at all. The thermal cycles became both long and powerful with climb rates off launch and the heights that were quickly reached being simply amazing. Great conditions for competition flying and having fun.
Although there were some far away (downwind landings), there was no model damage at all. And considering the conditions, the number of line breaks was small. Nobody came through with winning flights in every round although Marcus Stent came closest with five wins. A disastrous round 2 score pushed him down to fifth place. Dan Haskell came home strongly with three wins to take out third place. Hugh Blackburn revelled in the conditions with his ‘yet to be fully sorted out’ Fosa and took out second place. Alan Mayhew flew a variety of models consistently all day to take out the win. Only 26 points separated second place to fourth place so it was close.
Congratulations to
1 Alan Mayhew 5935.2
2 Hugh Blackburn5867.8
3 Dan Haskell 5854.1
A great way to spend a day … Gerry Carter (CD for a day)