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Dave Walter
18 Posts |
 Posted - 08/19/2007 : 09:37:28 AM
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The 34th Annual CRRC Soar-In
Contest Report August 2007
John Nilsson and Dave Walter
The Charles River Radio Controllers hosted the 34th edition of their unlimited duration sailplane contest on Aug 11 and 12. In the past, this has traditionally been accompanied by monsoon rain, gale force wind, and/or skin melting heat. Maybe it's recent global warming, or perhaps one of the CD's got down on his knees and prayed harder than ever before, but this year we were blessed with spectacular weather and near-ideal soaring conditions.
Man-On-Man Format: We ran a man-on-man contest again this year and the feedback we received was all favorable. Since we can't drive any vehicle on our town field, and since the field width is limited, we again used our dolly retrieval system. Two winches pull this small wooden dolly back and forth between the turnaround end and the winch line. Helpers at the turnaround end hook the chutes to the dolly and it pulls them back. This year we used a new low power, slow speed winch with speed control for the return pull. Standard winches or retrievers return the dolly to the turnaround end too fast and increase the chances for a crash/snarl up. The system ran smoothly all weekend.
Saturday: The Saturday morning pilot's meeting started off with a nice surprise for one contestant: the LSF selected Dr. Mark Drela to receive the Le Gray award for his many contributions to low Reynolds number airfoils and a long list of high performance sailplane designs. The Le Gray award is named after the founder of the League of Silent Flight, and it recognizes lifetime achievement in the world of model sailplanes. Congratulations Mark!
On Saturday, 16 signed up in Expert class, 9 in Sportsman, and 2 Novices jumped in to their first contest. Tasks were 7 minutes in the first round, 8 minutes in the second, and 10 minutes thereafter. It soon became apparent that this would be a true "landing contest" as pilots were maxing their flights in droves. Thermals were plentiful, widespread, and frequently lifted the planes to nose-bleed altitude. Thanks to the light wind, there were very few off field landings and no lost airplanes. What? A CRRC contest without search expeditions? What's the world coming to?
At the end of the day, after 7 rounds the top 10 Experts posted scores above 90 percent of the max possible score. I heard a lot of people muttering about practicing landings. The Sportsman group was a bit more spread out, but all Sportsman scores were still above 70 percent of a perfect score.
After a fine day of flying, the crystal mug awards went to the following pilots:
Saturday Expert
1st Dave Walter
2nd Tony Guide
3rd Mark Drela
Saturday Sportsmen
1st John Hayes
2nd Robert Buxton
3rd Michael Moore
Top Novice
George Messer
Sunday: Again we had perfect soaring weather - sunny, 80's and almost no wind. With these conditions, it was again largely a landing contest. Although, when you have booming lift, you will also have sink somewhere and more than one flyer found it. The launching system ran smoothly and there was only one plane damaged (when the pilot began flying another plane). The fifth round ended just after two and there was interest in doing another round. However we promised to get people on their way before three, as some had long rides. Next year we may start a bit earlier on Sunday.
Sunday Expert
1st Dave Walter
2nd Mark Drela
3rd Peter Schlitzkus
Sunday Sportsmen
1st Michael Moore
2nd Robert Buxton
3rd Bob Rondeau
Top Novice
George Messer
The overall winner for the weekend was Dave Walter.
Helpers: Without the dedicated work of our non-flying helpers, there would be no contest. We were blessed to have a great team. These included - Rick Penzick, Tom Stammberger, Welcome Bender, Warren Hopkins, and Ken Antonellis, at the turnarounds, Dave Marshall and Les Gerhardt scoring, Steve Young as winch master both days, Gene Rozea, Steve Young and Ken Antonellis did the food, and lots of others who stepped in and helped where they could. We also want to thank the pilots for their help, patience and support in making the contest work so smoothly.
John Nilsson and Dave Walter
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aeajr
477 Posts |
Posted - 09/29/2007 : 10:12:02 AM
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Great report guys. I wish everyone would post contest reports like this.
Best regards,
Ed Anderson
ESL Content Editor
aeajr on the forums |
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CRRC 34th Annual Soarin, Aug 11-12, 2007
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