F5J Electric Thermal Glider

Results VMAA F5J Vic State Championships 2018 Diggers Rest

Arrived at the diggers rest field to blue skies light North-Easterly winds, and me hoping we'd finally have a day of low f5j launches and the tactics that accompany them. I was concerned about daylight savings having kicked in that morning and people running late, but 11 starters and several spectators, were ready to go by the time i had arrived.

Unfortunatly Graham had technical issues with the plane he'd been fixing up late the previous night, as did Norm Ripp, so they both dropped out early.

Mak Kroger had once again came along to help out on the day, so i could run 2 heats per round, which also meant for a busy day of eight rounds ahead.

First round and everyone was fairly conservative with low to mid hundreds in metres launch height.

However by round 2 and 3 most were pushing the lower limits with Marcus winning a heat from a 25 metre start height, but was in a close battle with Dave Pratley in the same heat, and in the same thermal, until Dave zigged when he should've zagged and fell out.

By lunch time there was a big storm front developing to the North and the sky had heavily clouded over, with a 180 degree switch in the wind and now a medium strength wind blowing. So a change of tactics and most ballasted up and went for conservative launches closer to 150 or more metres.

As the afternoon wore on and with luck on our side the storms slipped past with only the odd drop of water here and there, and with the departing storm front the winds abated as well. So as the afternoon wore on, with the sky still cloudy, we encountered soft lift conditions. Occasionally someone would gamble on a lower launch, but it just didn't pay off, so the launches remained conservative, but were slowly getting lower again. Surprisingly I managed to spec out on my last flight, so there was still good air to be found late in the day.

Congratulations to:

1st Marcus Stent

2nd Jim Houdalakis

3rd David Milward

Thanks to Dave from Dave's Toys for Big Boys for sponsoring first place with a flight battery pack prize.

Thanks to the VMAA for providing the trophies.

And thanks to everyone who helped setup, pack up and enter scores, making my job easier.

pdf overall_results_f5j_state_champs_2018.pdf

pdf flight_scores_f5j_state_champs_2018.pdf

See you in Wentworth next week,

regards Jim H.

Group photo

Competitors

Jim 2nd, Marcus 1st, Dave M 3rd

Jim Houdalakis 2nd, Marcus Stent 1st, David Milward 3rd

Marcus

Marcus and Stork

Dave P presenting prize to marcus

Dave Pratley presenting prize

max and gary

Max and Gary

Z and Alan

Dave P and Bob

Dave Pratley and Bob

Hugh and Marcus

Dave Milward

David Milward

Results F5J Diggers Rest Sept 2018

Sunday saw the start to our Victorian competition gliding season after a 2 1/2 month winter break.

We had 6 starters for F5J electric launch glider, and a few apologies from people who wished they could've attended..

The conditions were cool, with about a 20 ish kph westerly all day and gusting to a bit more on occasion, with a mostly overcast sky.

The cycles were pretty far apart for most of the day, with the occasional strong lift cyle coming through, so you had to be on the ball,

because it was very easy to miss the boat at catching a core. Trying to catch up to someone already in a core usually meant ending up with not enough height to come back.

The gusty conditions made a mess of a lot of landings, and caused quite a few >75metre out landings with zero score, and some very long walks into adjacent paddocks, to retrieve planes.

In fact there was one heat mid-day where everyone landed out and got a zero.

It was also pleasing to see blast from the past at the event, in Max Kroger, who, even though didn't compete this time , is keen the get back into the swing of things,

and I have to thank for hanging around and helping as a spare time keeper and caller.

As usual consistency won out and congratulation go to :

Hugh Blackburn 1st

Dave Milward 2nd

Jim Houdalakis 3rd

pdf f5jflightscoresrcgasept18.pdf

pdf f5j Overall Results RCGA Sept18.pdf

see you at the next one,

JimH

Results F5j Varms May 2018

The annual F5J at VARMS saw a good turn out with 10 pilots competing. The 1pm start time and good weather saw a few new/old faces turn out for a fun afternoon. With westerly breezes there was not much space to chase thermals downwind, but good lift could be found in the North West and South. In the end the consistent pilots took out the places.

Congratulations to

1st Marcus Stent

2nd Hugh Blackburn

3rd Bob Wilson

pdf varms_flight_scores.pdf

pdf varms_overall.pdf

- Bruce Clapperton

Results f5j Milang S.A. March 2018

Being one of the four team trials, the F5J at Milang South Australia was well attended, with flyers coming in from all over the country plus a strong contingent from New Zealand, and Matt via Dubai.

Also a few flyers were having a go of electrics, after a lifetime of only winch launching. So a good turnout all in all.

Conditions were ideal with warm temps, and light winds and any gusting was typically thermal activity, and got stronger as the day went on.

The format was interesting with the organizers allocating teams of 3 per round, per lane, with a timer allocated to a pilot.

So you got to mix with a lot of other pilots which made it more interesting. It felt like I was on my feet all day and I was really knackered by the end of the day, but it was a lot of fun none the less.

We flew half of the Saturday, with a swap to f3j after lunch.We didn't have a fly off in f5j, so final standings were:

1st Joe Wurts

2nd Kevin Botherway

3rd Andrew Meyer

milang_f5j_presentation

Since this was also team trial #1 the top 3 Aussie pilots that nominated were

Andrew Meyer

Marcus Stent

Nick Chabrel

f5j international 2018 - overall results r1-r12.xls

xls f5j international 2018 - team trial 1.xls

regards

JimH

Results F5j Diggers Feb 2018

Hi All,

This event was almost called off because the forecast was for 30km/h winds, fowever the FAI limit for F5J is 12m/s (43km/h), so we decided that we needed to lift our skills and fly in the challenging conditions.

5 pilots braved the wild conditions and unlike Open Thermal the launch part of the task could be completed relatively safely and there were no incidents on launch.

The day turned out to be a terrific learning curve for everyone and everyone agreed it was a really worthwile and fun day. The biggest lesson from the day was to get a power system that could launch to 250m, with a full ballast and still penetrate 300m forward in 30km/h winds... hmmm, more work to do!

The only major incident of the day was when Marcus lost radio contact with his model 450m high and 400m downwind and the resultant kiss with terra firma meant we were bringing back parts in a carry bag. :-( Thanks to Hugh and Dave M for their help getting the parts back.

Congratulations to:

1st Hugh Blackburn

2nd Alan Mayhew

3rd David Pratley

Interestingly the top 3 pilots had very different techniques:

Hugh Blackburn had a more conservative approach with his underpowered Maxa and he launched relatively low for the day (78m - 193m) and then surfed the gusts and found corridors of lift.

Alan Mayhew flew a very heavy Explorer 2 with a powerful powerplant and had a more agressive aproach and could often be seen chasing thermals a long way downwind.

David Pratlety used a technique of flying out very fast and very low and then pulling vertical to convert that speed into height, launching between 143m and 220m for the day.

Interestingly, the different techniques worked at different times throughout the day and Hugh won the day with some very smooth and consistent flying. Well done Hugh!

pdf f5j flight scores.pdf

pdf f5j overall result.pdf

als explorer