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flyeslhost
158 Posts |
 Posted - 08/09/2004 : 5:12:55 PM
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By Anker Berg-Sonne
08/09/04 - The CRRC Soar-In, which is the northern-most contest in the ESL circuit, was held in absolutely gorgeous weather this past weekend. Saturday we had 30 contestants and Sunday we had a slightly smaller showing with 26 pilots. |
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flyeslhost
158 Posts |
Posted - 08/09/2004 : 5:14:10 PM
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By Anker Berg-Sonne
08/09/04 - The CRRC Soar-In, which is the northern-most contest in the ESL circuit, was held in absolutely gorgeous weather this past weekend. Saturday we had 30 contestants and Sunday we had a slightly smaller showing with 26 pilots.
Saturday’s weather started out as some of the best soaring conditions I have ever seen. Booming thermals with smooth air between them. There must have been down air somewhere, but we saw very little of it. Our CD, Dave Walter, started off with 3 rounds of 8 minutes and 1 round of 5 minutes, taken in any order you wanted. Landing were standard 100 point, 12 foot graduated landing tapes. Flyers were broken into 4 flight groups, each with a 10 minute launch window. Launches were down-wind with a 6 to 10 mph breeze, but didn’t seem to hurt anybody. By the time we broke for lunch you could have all your times, just missed two landings, and ended up in the bottom half of the pack.
The afternoon looked the same, but the lift had departed for some other county, and now you had to fly as smoothly as you possibly could to try to make the 8 minute tasks. Dave finally decided to make the last round a 6 minute task because almost nobody was making their times.
The day was won by smooth flyers with light airplanes. Jan Kansky took 1st in expert, helped by his original MH32 Mantis. Mark Drela was second, flying his new Supra. This is an incredible ship. Roughly 130 inch wingspan, full-house glider weighing 48 oz! Third was Jose Bruzual. 4th overall and 1st Sportsman was Miner Crary. 2nd Sportsman was Jeff Newcum and 3rd was Bruce Schneider. A sweep by the CRRC membership!
Sunday the wind was a bit stronger, still downwind launches, and fairly touch conditions all day. Right from the first flight the sir was very bumpy, with strong thermals and killer sink in between. I made the mistake of ballasting up one round and found that I couldn’t core the small thermals. The rest of the day I flew unballasted. Mark flew all day with no ballast in his Supra. Apparently is does no make sense to ballast an Aegea or a Supra unless the ind is above 20MPH. Mark managed to break the inch lines twice with his Supra in spite of launching downwind. Noone else broke a line all weekend.
John Nilsson, who CDd Sunday, decided on exactly the same format as Saturday with 3 8s and a 5 in any order, followed by all 8s. At the end of the day Mark Drela had buried everybody and tool 1st in Expert. Fritz Bien was close on his heels and took 2nd and Paul Bell from LISF broke the CRRC stranglehold on wood with a 3rd place. Again, the 4th place overall was an impressive performance by a Sportsman, Stuart Strong, even more impressive if you consider that Stuart is over 80 years old. 2nd Sportsman was Miner Crary in 5th overall and 3rd Sportsman was Jeff Newcum, who was 6th overall. We clearly have some Sportsmen living on borrowed time before getting promoted to Expert.
Both days the equipment performed extremely well. We not have 10 gauge wire running all the way from out 4KW generator to the winches and there was not a single tired battery all weekend. For kicks, John measured the voltage drop from the generator to the winch chargers. It dropped from 129 volts to 118, so the voltage drop over 200 feet of cable is significant, even with the very heavy cable we use. Smaller gauge cable drops the voltage enough to make the battery chargers relatively ineffective.
Lunch was a cold cuts and rolls, with a liberal supply of cold water and soft drinks.
The full results can be viewed at http://flyesl.com/scores/scoreCon.asp?vnr=Saturday&vfn=13 on the ESL web site.
A lot of great pictures are at http://charlesriverrcpictures.org/Contest_Soar_in_04 courtesy of Jeff Newcum.
-- Anker Berg-Sonne
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CRRC Soar-In Report
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