Milang is a small town about 1 hour’s driveEast Adelaide about 30 km from the Coast and in the wine growing area of South Australia. It’s also host to a high standard F5J contest held inconjunction with an F3J comp and a hand launch F3K weekend.

The F5J event was held on Friday and Saturday afternoon.

The NZ team for this year’s world championshipin Slovakia (including Joe Wurts, winner of many model gliding world champion medals, both individually and as team member) flew at the contest as did the recently selected Australian F5J team of Andrew Meyer, Jim Houdalakis and Marcus Stent.

The contest was held in what I call the “Southern” or winch format. In this format, contestants are divided into teams and have a fixed launch spot.You are “ protected”; that is you don’t fly against your team member, but you fly against everyone else.In this contest there were 14 teams of 2.

So you flew every second heat and timed on the first heat. There were five minutes between heats, enough time to put a battery on to charge, take a drink, apply the sunscreen, etc. The format has advantages and disadvantages. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot, so being stuck out on the flight-line with no shelter for 8 hours on the Friday wasn’t so bad.

One thing I did like was putting in scores over the smart phone. Smart phone scoring was developed by an Australian, Gerry Carter, and is widely used at contests overseas, but for some reason the majority of Australian contests still insist on pencil and paper. The smart phone system lets you see the score in each group as its entered and updates overall results regularly. In the team system the scoring system means that you saved the time of walking to the scoring tent. On a long flight line, over the day, this time saving adds up. As a result over a day and a half we flew 16 rounds. This was great practice for someone like me.

The contest was brilliantly run by Southern Soaring League, who own the field. They have built some great facilities for comfort, and working on and storing models. Still, the two year old drought had made a real mess of conditions; zero grass and enough dust to get into my Tx gimbals. Beside the facilities, the club members were very helpful and organized and put on agreat comp.

On the Friday conditions were tough. It was windy but not incredibly so, but the thermals were very tricky; impossible for me, and difficult for even good flyers. The landing direction was changed in the day. On the Saturday conditions started out much better, and there weresome launches under 100 metres.

Joe Wurts, not unexpectedly,was leading the contest, but for most of the day he was carryinga landing out zero which meant a bad flight could cost him first place. He was at the other end of the flight line to me, but nevertheless I did see most of one flight on Saturday. This had Joe’s “Plus” flying at medium height, under 100 metres in front of the launch line, then moving say 250 metres to the left when the first position didn’t work out. He was lower, and then when that didn’t work out he moved back behind the flight line and flying cross wind.
He was down to less than 20 metres height where he encountered lift to get away for the last 3 minutes. The only indication of the lift I saw was from the circle the Plus made whenit hit the lift.

Quite often making the ten minutes on the Saturday required making a “save” from low altitude from thermal bubbles that blew across the field. It was a testing and therefore rewarding contest. In every heat someone made the ten minutes so, if you “flunked”, you were penalized. As far as models went, I’m more and more convinced that the model is secondary to the pilot. There were plenty of Pluses, Pikes, Storks and also Maxas. As I understand it, the lightweight Pluses (typically under 1100 g) were carrying say 150 g of ballast. JoeWutrs, flying a Plus, won the comp but Pete Williams pushed himclosely flying a Maxa, and Marcus Stent flew the best of the Aussies using a Stork. It’s congratulations to Marcus who had a dog crush the centre panel of his new lightweight Stork only a couple of days before the contest.

My own model was flying at 1380 g and at times I thought it struggled in Saturday’s conditions. My Saturday flying can’t be forgotten soon enough, but on the Sunday I made it 5 flights in a row including a couple of low level saves, so I can’t complain. Average launch height, excluding land out flights, was 168 metres across the contest, and the winner’s average launch height was 147 metres. Average landing points were 41, so this shows the F3J background of many pilots. Average flight time was 517 seconds with the winner on 594 seconds, again excluding land outs. In this contest, F3J or open thermal experience was important; reading the air up high was as important as reading it down low.

by

David Leitch

Congrats to 

1st Joe Wurts

2nd Peter Williams

3rd Marcus Stent

 international-f5j-overall results.pdf

F5j at the VARMS High-Street rd field can be a challenge with the field restrictions to the north and east ,

trees and high voltage powerlines to the west and tip to the south,

and with the forecast southerly, i had my trepidations.

Luckily the wind somewhat played ball, and dropped from medium to light  strength, down to variable and almost nothing as the afternoon progressed.

We had 8 starters including a junior Joseph Rochier, which we haven’t seen in a long time, and a few spectators.

I think the best tactic was to head west, upwind and low over the trees, and catch bubbles kicking off at the tree line.

Dave used this tactic over the day to good effect.

I was also impressed by Alan, who painted himself into the north-east corner, which is the most restrictive part of the field, on more than one occasion,

and managing to hang/surf the bubbles coming through to get his time.

I myself started a bit too conservative, with some highish launches, and my landings weren't the best, but didn't end up too far off the winner. 

Not everyone was lucky on the day, with Bob and Col coming together while in the same thermal, late in the afternoon, and Bob's plane out of action for the rest of the day.

Final results were:

1st David Pratley

2nd Alan Mayhew

3rd Jim Houdalakis

 overall_results_f5j_09_12_18.pdf

 flight_scores_f5j_09_12_18.pdf

 landing_results_f5j_09_12_18.pdf

regards

Jim Houdalakis