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