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aeajr
477 Posts |
 Posted - 09/02/2010 : 5:20:58 PM
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Contest report by Steve Lucke
Here goes with some of the details of the 3 days at the ESL Mid-Season Thermal Duration contest held at the Daniel Boone Homestead this past weekend.
The Port-a-John arrived on Thursday. (As far as I was concerned the single most important piece of equipment was in place.)
On Friday I was impressed with how many fliers showed up to practice fly and hang out under a warm sun with lots of lift. We had about 10 people flying off a club winch with a retriever as well as checking out the rebuilt ESL winches. Tony Guide did the rebuild and all four winches performed flawlessly during Friday's practice session and during both contest days. Tony's help in maintaining the equipment is a very valuable contribution to the ESL.
Pete Schlitzkus reworked the turnarounds and we gave those a good workout as well. Those worked fine as well except for one minor issue Pete fixed as the contest went along.
On Friday Tom Brosky flew the Icon 2 Darryl Perkins used to win the 2010 F3j World Championships. The Supras have been the kings of the ESL for the last few years but Tom's Icon 2 is at the very least equal to the Supra, and with a bigger wing is easier to see, but still is light enough to get a substantial launch. I was very impressed with the Icon 2. It is expensive though as anybody who has checked out the Maple Leaf website can tell you.
I also saw the light weight Perfect, Perfect SL I think, it was Frank Strommer's plane and it was very impressive as well.
As expected there were a lot of Supras flown on Friday and you still can't go wrong with one of those.
We had the tremendous benefit of having Donna Strommer, Dawn Huffman and Joanne Bustamante work the scorer's tent for us on both contest days. You can't imagine how much of a help that is when running a contest to get that kind of quality assistance during a long contest day. We are in their debt.
On Saturday we had 9 Sportsman and 21 experts under clear skies, very little wind and warm temperatures. We did seeded MOM using a brand new software scoring program designed and built by Dave Beach. All of us TD folks owe a huge thank you to Dave for spending days and days writing code that would have cost thousands of dollars if we tried to have an outside vender do it for us. This was a monumental task and we all appreciate Dave's work on our behalf.
We used 4 winches with a golf cart for retrieving the lines. I believe the winch lines were at least 600 feet to the turnarounds and we did use 290 pound test. There was a pop off winch with a retriever available as well. We managed 8 rounds thanks to everybody pitching in to drive the golf cart, time and help out at the winch line. As I said conditions were good and we started with 8 minute rounds, just a few minutes after 9 AM and eventually worked our way up to 10s.
Since we were flying MOM conditions were fairly equal for everybody during each flight round. In Sportsman we had Gary Bolash flying an Agea Mantis, if I recall correctly, finishing third. The President, Mr. Anderson finished second flying his Supra and in first flying a Supra was Preston Heller.
In Expert it was a tight race. Leszek Zyga flying an 80 ounce Explorer was in fifth with a raw score of 8434. Leszek is a very smooth flier and one of the most consistent launchers in the ESL, with a bit of a heavy plane. In fourth was Tom Broski and his Icon 2, a very impressive finish considering it was only the second day he had the plane. His raw score was 8451. In third was Luis Bustamante flying a Supra Pro with a raw score of 8475. In second place flying a standard Perfect, which some folks might consider a bit heavy as well, was Dave Beach, one point ahead of Luis. Luis is now checking every single line of code Dave wrote. :-))
First place went to Dave Walters and his Supra with a high raw score of 8554. Dave was very consistent the entire weekend. He launched well, read air well and landed well.
On Sunday we had 8 Sportsmen and 18 Experts. Conditions were again very good but a bit warmer then on Saturday with very little wind and lots of lift. We did seeded MOM again, but separated the Sportsman group from the Expert group on this day. We started right at 9 with a 8 minute task then move to 9s for the rest of the day.
We got 6 rounds in and probably should have done 7, but I chose to end things just a shade early to allow people to get home before traffic got horrendous. I am considering going a bit later at the EOS TD contest in October on Sunday as the traffic conditions should be a bit easier for us by that time of the year. I definitely want to do at least 8 rounds on the Saturday of the EOS.
We had only 2 or 3 line breaks the whole 3 days at Daniel Boone. Nice job guys!
In Sportsman on Sunday Bob Turner finished in fourth flying his Agea Mantis with a raw score of 5905. Bob was beat out for a third place trophy by his son, Chris who had a raw score of 5925. I wish I could remember what Chris flew. In second place was Dave Bradley, Jr with 5986 and in first place flying an old Sapphire, I think, was Duane Beck with 6077 points.
In Expert it was tighter then on Saturday. In seeded MOM the best fliers for the day end up flying together in the last round. The last round was Leszek, Luis, Neal Huffman and Dave Walters. Leszek flying his Explorer, Luis and Dave Supras and Neal with the new Supra Comp. They all maxed their flights and came to the landing task, one point for each inch up to a max of 100 points. It was fun watching their reactions to their landings, especially Luis's and Neal's. :-))
In fourth was Leszek with a raw score of 6419. In third was Neal with a raw score of 6427. In second with a raw score of 6429 was Luis and in first was Dave with a raw score of 6430. That's with a 100 inch graduated landing tape! These guys flew extremely well for the entire contest.
Please feel free to add any additional information about the contest that I could easily have missed and also please make any corrections.
Thanks to everybody who flew at the Mid-season and I hope to see big bunch of ya'll at the End of Season!.
Steve Lucke
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Edited by - aeajr on 11/24/2010 08:07:00 AM |
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aeajr
477 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2010 : 8:43:20 PM
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What a fantastic weekend we had at the Daniel Boone Silent Flyers field. The weather was about as good as it gets. We had 32 pilots on Saturday. I am not sure how many on Sunday but it was a few less.
Since we have been discussing contest formats, I thought I would share my impressions of this weekend's contest format. In my time in the ESL I have seen a few different formats for our TD contests.
OPEN WINCH
I have flown the open winch format where the pilots were formed into flight groups. Each flight group had a launch window which I think was about 10 minutes. Pilots could launch when they were ready. There were 4 or 5 winches so you could hold back till late in the round. Many pilots would wait for someone else to mark the lift, then rush to the winches. Or they would watch for lift indicators, then launch. But the start of the round usually found few pilots walking to the winches. This was a fun format that favored those who launched later in the round. In the open winch format, as I recall, all pilots were scored against all pilots regardless of which flight group you were in. Experts and sportsman were mixed in the flight groups.
MAN ON MAN - RANDOMIZED
The ESL has moved more and more toward the man on man format for our TD contests. In this format pilots are randomized at the beginning of the contest and flight groups of up to 5 pilots are formed. The number is based on the number of winches.
Those pilots launch in rapid sequence and are scored against each other. The concept here is that they are all flying in the same air. In this way, even if you all launched into a sink cycle, you were all in it. You might only fly 5 minutes on a 10 minute task and still win the round for maximum score. Typically the sportsman are flown together and the experts are flown together. The groups are not mixed, though there is no rule against mixing the classes. In this format you can work out your timer arrangements at the start of the day. Typically experts time for sportsman and sportsman for experts.
SEEDED MOM - EXPERT AND SPORTSMAN MIXED
Saturday we flew a format that I had not tried before, seeded man on man with experts and sportsman mixed together. I have to say it worked well. I found myself, a sportsman, flying in groups of experts on several rounds. That was fun and challenging as I don't normally fly against these pilots. If there was a downside to this format it was that at the end of each round there was a time everyone had to wait while they put in the scores and publish the next round of flight groups. Then everyone had to try to work out timer arrangements.
The sequence was that the lowest scoring group flew first in each round. So, by mid day the first group of the next round did come up sooner as they felt that they could get that group up before the last group, the highest scoring group, had reported times. This was a good step and reduced the wait time significantly although I think it placed more work on the scoring team. Working out timers was still a bit tricky, however we made it work. Hopefully everyone had a good time. I know I did.
SEEDED MOM - FLOWN BY CLASS
Sunday we again flew a seeded MOM but the sportsman and experts were kept separated. From a contest flow point of view this ran more smoothly as they could seed the sportsman while the experts were flying and experts were seeded while sportsman were flying. And since sportsman would never be flying with experts it was easer to work out timer arrangements.
I enjoyed them both and would be happy to fly either format again.
A huge thank you goes to David Beach who wrote a new scoring program to accomodate these new formats. A big thanks also goes to Luis Bustamante for working with David to work out the details and to get the system working at the scoring table.
As I understand it, they want to make a few more tweaks, then will publish the new scoring program so everyone can use it.
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Best regards,
Ed Anderson
ESL President,
ESL Newsletter Editor
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aeajr
477 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2010 : 08:57:41 AM
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From: Duane Beck
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 5:29 PM
To: Lucke, Steve
Subject: Re: [talk] The ESL Mid Season Contest at Daniel Boone
Chris Turner was flying an Emerald. I flew a Sapphire fuse with a set
of Drela airfoiled wings made by Phil Barnes.
I wish I could remember what Chris flew.
... and in first place flying an old Sapphire, I
think, was Duane Beck with 6077 points.
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Best regards,
Ed Anderson
Long Island Silent Flyers
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The ESL Mid Season Contest-Daniel Boone Aug 2010
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