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aeajr
477 Posts |
 Posted - 07/15/2011 : 1:44:10 PM
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Contest Report ¡V LISF 1 June 25, 26
By Ed Anderson
This is the ESL contest that almost wasn¡¦t. In fact on Wednesday of the week of the contest we still did not know if we would have to cancel the contest.
You see, the Long Island Silent Flyers field is located in a nature preserve. This means that it can¡¦t be developed, which is good for us. And since it is County land, only the County is allowed to cut the grass. This is normally also a good thing as we don¡¦t incur the cost of cutting. However this year a number of events hit all at once which almost left us with a field of 4 foot high grass for the contest. Those were County budget cuts, equipment that kept breaking and a group of naturalists who feel that no blade of grass should ever be cut at Stillwell Field, despite the fact that this is a designated Nassau County Flying Field for gliders.
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Frank Strommer, or CD was in a cancel/no cancel state for two weeks. We did not want to cancel the contest, but we did not want to wait to the last minute to tell people that the field was not flyable. What to do, what to do?
Enter our hero, Rich Verriest, LISF Treasurer and County Liaison. You all know Rich as the master of the scoring table.
Thanks to Rich¡¦s diplomatic efforts we finally got the grass cut on Thursday and Friday. They did not finish till 18 hours before the contest. Richard will be awarded the honorable order of the master negotiator and has been invited to settle the disputes in the Middle East. Thanks Rich, we owe you one!
Frank Strommer, our CD, is a master of organization and keeping things moving. Assisted by a number of LISF members, the winches were set in a Northwest direction. The weather gave us a little trouble on Saturday. It seems that someone ordered fog for Saturday morning, so our start was a little delayed. But after the sun burned it off, we were able to start the contest and get things rolling.
The contest was flown man-on-man with 3 to 4 man flight groups. Scoring was done according to the constant-delta normalized landing method, developed by our President, Josh Glabb. The first two rounds were flown in random groups with the remaining groups flown based on seeding. Experts were grouped with Experts and Sportsman with Sportsmen with our one Novice flying with the Sportsmen. Thanks to David Beech for developing the scoring program that makes this all possible.
We had 34 pilots registered for the contest, but in the end I believe we had 29 pilots on Saturday and Sunday including one Novice who flew with the Sportsman.
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After his stellar performance over the weekend we have decided that this Novice, Marc Gottlieb, will have to fly Sportsman next time. No more sand bagging Marc, you have clearly earned your wings. Well done! ļ
We had moderate breezes on Saturday morning. There was lift but it was not abundant and you had to go hunting for it. There were many strong sink cycles that saw Expert and Sportsman groups down way short of the task time. Thank goodness for man on man scoring.
Shortly after lunch, a tasty repast of heroes and salads, the wind reversed on us so that the last two rounds were flown with downwind launches. But the wind speeds were not too high so this was more of an inconvenience than a problem. I believe we flew 7 rounds on Saturday. (The final scores were not yet posted as of this writing). In other words we had a great soaring day that challenged our skills.
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During the awards on Saturday Steve Lucke received a special award, the order of the clean T-Shirt. The nature of the award was not disclosed but many suspect it is some kind of secret society. There will be a full investigation. 
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Saturday night a meeting was held at Major¡¦s Steak House. What was the subject of the meeting? Why whether to have ribs or rib eye, naturally. The group consumed mass quantities of protein in order to be prepared for the next day¡¦s contest.
Sunday started off as a beautiful day without Saturday¡¦s morning fog. There was a bit more breeze but not enough to call out the ballast box or to deter the many RES planes that were being flown in Sportsman and Expert.
I believe we flew 6 rounds on Sunday. While the lift was a bit more consistent on Sunday, we were still visited by some of those sink cycles that just seem to take the whole field down. Here you are coming down 3 minutes short of your time, figuring you have failed in your task, only to find you are last man down. Cool!
Between the excellent maintenance that has been done on the ESL winches, and the new drums, the winches worked perfectly on Saturday and Sunday. One battery charger did give up the ghost but a sub was ready to go, so no problems there. And as I recall we only had only 2 or 3 line breaks all weekend and at least one of those was a knot that did not do its job.
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Overall the weekend was filled with great flying, lots of laughs and smiles and very few incidents of a serious nature. One tail boom got caught in a line and a couple of planes were sucked in by the trees, but these types of events were few and far between. Overall a great weekend of flying. The final scores will be posted on the ESL web site.
LISF will welcome the ESL back two more times this season. On August 6 and 7 LISF will host the ESL for the LISF Hand Launch Classic. Bring your DLGs and fly according to F3K rules. Come fly with David Ashinsky, member of the USA F3K team. LISF is proud to have him as a member of our club. AS this is being written, David and the USA F3K team are in Sweden giving the world a lesson in how F3K should be flown.
Our CD, Frank Nisita, orders abundant lift for the LISF F3K events. Frank runs a great contest, so don¡¦t miss it!
Then in September the winches come back to LISF on September 24 and 25 for LISF 2. Rumor has it that Frank Strommer, our CD, will have excellent flying conditions on hand, with a few twists to keep things interesting. I forecast a great weekend and a good time to be had by all.
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Best regards,
Ed Anderson
Long Island Silent Flyers
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Edited by - aeajr on 07/15/2011 1:48:14 PM |
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Contest Report ¡V LISF 1 June 25, 26 2011
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