The Hampton Roads Silent Flyers held a Radian electric-powered sailplane competition on New Year's Eve. The objective of the Radian competition was to provide an event that many could participate in.
The HRSF has many members who are fairly new to R/C and soaring. While several have high-performance competition sailplanes, like Supras, Avas, etc., many more have Radians. The Radian is an ideal aircraft for R/C training given its long duration on a single charge combined with the easy flying characteristics. The Radian is also fairly damage tolerant with good energy dissipation characteristics (i.e.: it is made out of foam) and is readily repairable. Perhaps the Radian's weakness is the motor and motor mount assembly which can't absorb too much abuse before needing to be replaced.
The Radian Pro provides additional capabilities due to its separate flaps and ailerons. This enables pilots to become familiar with operations of a full 6-channel sailplane for spot landings, thermaling and speed changing/reflex modes if setup properly. Since the Radians are relatively low-cost, pilots are more comfortable with loaning their aircraft to others who don't have one, significantly increasing the number of pilots who could participate in the event.
The rules for the competition were pretty simple and designed to help keep everything even. Since the Radian seems to have a higher climb rate than the "Pro", the "Pros" had a 5-second head start and a 35 second motor run. The Radians had a 30 second motor run. This seemed to provide fairly even climbs and had the additional benefit of deconflicting the airspace at launch. Given the improved ability of the "Pro" to nail the landing, the Radians were given a 20% landing bonus, limited to 100 points. The landing task used FAI-tapes (100 points). These 15-meter landing tapes are ideal since they provide reasonably good discrimination near the center for the hot-shots (inner 2m are 1 point/20 cm) while also enabling many to have a chance at getting some landing points. The competition was run in seeded-MOM format to provide the best probability of having good matchups.
A big pot of chili was provided for lunch and to snack on. Soft drinks were available. Since it was New Years Eve, adult-beverages were on-hand to for a toast to 2011 and subsequent Apres soaring socializing. Everyone got a complementary bottle of foam-safe kicker for participating. The weather was Ok, but definitely challenging for Radian flying. The early rounds were flown in 5 to 15 mph. The latter rounds were flown in 10 to 20 which definitely influenced the ability to make the max times. The first 4 rounds were 10-minute max times, the last three rounds were 7-minute max times. Flying started at 11am and ended around 3pm and we got 7 rounds total.
Early in the contest I was able to make my first two 10-minute flights. I was able to find good lift to climb in during the motor run and find secondary thermals after the initial thermal moved down wind. However, after the first two rounds, conditions were much harder and flight times were reduced. While the initial climb could be to 1,200 ft, the combination of significant sink and wind made finding and working secondary thermals very hard. Many rounds were won with 3-minute flights. There was a lot of transition from the A-group to the B-group throughout the day. Many pilots would move up to the B-group only to be returned to the A-group and vice-versa.
Name Total
1 Glaab,Josh 6,532.24
2 Broeski,Tom 5,320.46
3 Hare,Dave 4,843.61
4 Glaab,Luke 4,612.23
5 Strickland,Lenny 4,280.96
6 King,Gary 4,240.19
7 Richmond,Don 4,207.52
8 Glaab,JoshJr 4,198.83
9 Johns,Rob 2,980.23
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Rob and Angela Johns enjoy some lunch-time chili.
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Trish Glaab came out and ran the scoring. Trish really helped keep things moving along and I really appreciate her help with the event.
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An inadvertent encounter with a power line was an issue for this Radian. Gary King drives the retrieve quad.
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Here is a group launch.
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Here is a Radian specked-out. Later in the day, this was about 2 minutes of hang time ;-).
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Lenny Strickland won B-group.
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Gary King, new soaring pilot, was 2nd, just 33 points ahead of Don.
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Don Richmond was 3rd in A-group.
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Josh Jr was 4th in A-group. Scores were tight in A-group, 100 points from 1st to 4th.
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Tom Broeski came in 2nd in B-group.
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Dave "Hare Trigger" Hare came in 3rd. Dave flew consistently well all day with his Radian Pro.
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Luke Glaab came in 4th in A-group. Luke even bailed on the last round since he felt it was too windy to be enjoyable for him.
HRSF New Year's Eve Radian Fly!
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Posted - 01/02/2012 : 12:41:33 PM
