VMAA F5j State Champs 2019 Mt Wallace Victoria

We had 11 starters for the VMAA F5J state champs at the State Field at Mt Wallace, about an hour west of Melbourne, and I think it was the first time any of the other competitors but me had been there. It's a great new field, with lots of space, so I can see plenty of events being held there, and the host Bacchus Marsh Aero Assoc. were very welcoming, putting on sausage sizzle for lunch. Thank you BMAA!

My wishes were answered and it didn't rain, and it wasn't windy, although we missed out on my wish for a bit of warmth. So conditions stayed heavily overcast pretty much all day with a bit of sun peeking through mostly in the middle of the day. The wind swung from the west in the morning which made it difficult to measure the strength because of the tall bank of trees that ran behind the pits and carpark. So calm down low and somewhat breezy up high.

The pilots who started the day conservatively (over 150m) did well in the very light morning lift because it often took a while to find it. In Round 1 Marcus judged his height to 199m and only just scraped in his time, but in round 2 it took nearly all his 187m launch height to finally find a bubble which looked good until it finally died a long way downwind and he fell 10m short of the 75m landing limit to score a zero. It was hero to zero in 2 flights!

The conditions soon changed to stronger lift and stronger sink which made it harder to just surf the air, and some good flights were had with launch heights less than 100m. The wind also picked up during the middle of the day and pilots were adding ballast to penetrate in the stiff breeze. A number of pilots fell agonizingly short of the 75m limit when the lift quickly turned to sink and they could not make it home.

The lift got stronger in the early afternoon and the cycles got even longer. You could have big lift in one heat and then big sink in the next heat, but there was usually some lift to be found not too far away. The trick was not to base your launch height on the previous group, but to asses the air in your group and launch accordingly.

By the end of the day the lift lightened off and this caught out a few pilots who launched just a little too low and could not make their times. In the second last group of the day David Pratley, Andrew, Bruce and Hugh all launched withing 40m height of each other and the sink that came through was brutal causing the winning flight to be 6 minutes. In the end David eeked out 6 more seconds and was the lowest launcher to take the 1000 points. Well flown David!

In the end Marcus had pipped Andrew by just 1 point in nearly 6,000 to take the win with Hugh finishing 3rd.

A special thanks to Andrew for flying across from Adelaide for the day!