HRSF/BRASS ESL Season Opener last weekend, aka the ESL meets Daryl!
During the weekend of May 4th, 5 th, and 6 th , the Hampton Roads Silent Flyers and the Blue Ridge Area Soaring Society (HRSF/BRASS) hosted the opening of the ESL's 2012 Unlimited competition soaring season. Overall, rain limited the number of rounds to some extent, but the flying accomplished during the 11 rounds flown (4 Sat, 7 Sun) were outstanding. Daryl Perkins won Saturday and overall, but Neal Huffman put up a dramatic flight at the end to win Sunday.
Chuck Pinnel won both individual days as well as overall in Sportsflyer.
I arrived at the gorgeous field Friday evening to find many pilots practicing for the contest. We had a strategy meeting of how to lay out the field and Steve Lucke and a few others setup the winches and spot tapes before leaving the field. John Jenks and Joe Melchiore showed up around 6pm after flying in from New Jersey in a C-172. John was flying a new Spread Tow Supra which looked great. Unfortunately, John misjudged his proximity to some trees and ended up putting the Supra into the top of one of them. Definitely not the way to start the weekend! Field owner Franky Coyner was able to get one of his workers to come out Friday evening and do some tree climbing. They retrieved the Supra without a scratch! Things were looking good Friday evening with only (only?) a 40% chance of rain Saturday and a great forecast for Sunday.
During the pilots meeting I acknowledged many of the ESL members who made significant contributions to the league during the off-season. Dave Beach overhauled the ESL website and it is a thing of beauty! Leszek Zyga fabricated fantastic winch-brake arms that were installed by Tony Guide. Tony also re-worked the winches and designed and fabricated plywood winch ground interface plates. The idea is to nail the plates to the ground and use an adjustment on the winch mounting to make fine alignment adjustments. They worked great! Steve Lucke brought all the winch and other gear to the field. The Bustamantes were also in the house and brought the ESL's PA sound system and ran the scoring all weekend with help from Dawn Huffman and Teresa Zyga. Rob Johns came up to support the competition and tirelessly drove the golf cart all weekend. Lenny Strickland and Don Richmond were the pit crew for the golf cart which was essential for its continued operation. It is a team effort and the ESL is a great team! Outstanding contributions all!
The tasks for the entire weekend was to be 10-minute man-on-man tasks with the 100 pt 1pt/inch Constant-Delta (C-delta) landing task. The C-delta landing task is a normalized landing where the landing score is a function of flight time (0.11111 pts/sec) and measured landing. For pilots flying the same flight time, the difference (or delta) in the landing scores is the difference in the round scores. The first 2 rounds were random and all the rounds after that were seeded. The Experts were mixed with the Sportsflyers. Off-field landings and other zero flights were to be assessed at the end of the contest to avoid Experts from dropping down and hassling the lower groups. We had LSF Level-V contests both days as a result of combining Experts with the Sportsflyers into one group.
We got rolling on Saturday and immediately encountered some light drizzle. We pushed through it to get "official" just before lunch when we completed the 3rd round. After that the weather turned out to be sort of poor with a multi-hour rain delay after lunch. Around 2pm things started to clear and there was hope for 2 more rounds. However, at the end of the 4th round mom-nature said "nay nay" to the 5th round and we called it a day. I managed to put up 4 perfect 10-minute rounds and averaged a 90 in the 1 pt/inch landing circle with my Spread Tow Supra. That was good enough for 2nd. Daryl�s 98-pter at the end closed the day flying his latest Icon-2. In Sportsflyer it was Chuck Pinell who took top honors with is Shadow. Around 5pm the rain ended and we did manage to do some Radian flying. We had an intra-Glaab family old-school competition (Josh Jr, Luke, Trish, and I) with our Radian Pro. It was great to have Trish flying again! Luke won the event in 3 rounds.
Did I mention the fantastic forecast for Sunday? Didn't quite happen the way they predicted it. When we got started flying at 9am, the ceiling was about 400ft with a ragged lower set of clouds at 350 or so. This made for some interesting flying. We got a few rounds in, then took a 20 minute break to let a really low cloud go by. Daryl put up a check flight and even though his plane eventually disappeared, then reappeared, we decided to get going again.
For the last half of Sunday the sun came out and lift conditions became perfect for Man-on-Man soaring competition. Lots of planes were skied-out to several thousand feet. The competition was definitely a landing contest through the 5th round and much of the 6th. However, at the end of the 6th, the wind changed direction slightly and the lift began to deteriorate. You could just feel it. The 6th round had some shake-up in the top seeded group as two pilots dropped time. That allowed Leszek (4m Explorer) and I (Spread Tow Supra) back in the top group, which also included Daryl (ICON-2), Neal (Supra Carbon Light). Wooo hooo!! Back in the Big Dance for the final round!
We all got good launches but it became obvious that the lift was transitioning and definitely degraded from previous flight groups. The ground feeders were fluctuating and the air seemed somewhat schitzo. It was like when you hit a nice thermal the air said "I love you I love you I love you" for the first part of the turn, then "I hate you I hate you I hate you" for the rest of the turn. Whacky conditions for sure. Perfect conditions for Man on Man!
The group scattered to different ends of the field since everyone was sucking. At one point, my plan was that I was going to work this lift I have, then if it dies I am going to jump in with Daryl. Then, I looked at what Daryl was doing and realized I was in trouble. I had a good seat for the final battle since I fell-out at 5 minutes into the 10, DOUGH!!!. Daryl was off to the S.E. and flirting with some trees and a plane-inviting pond at perilously low-altitudes. Neal was way to the North, Lesek to the East, also flirting with disaster. All pilots must have worked a dozen different hits of lift in a desperate battle against gravity. At 8:30 into the flight, all pilots were staggering into the landing zone at less than 15 ft and stretching for all they were worth. Daryl and Leszek came up short of the landing and couldn't clear the last little ground roller, but Neal was able to approach from sort of upwind and, while running back to the spot and jumping over winches, do an emergency 180 get a 71 point landing. Neal had a 8:47, Daryl an 8:45 and Leszek and 8:41. Wow!!! Chuck Pinell took both days of Sportsflyer and Daryl won overall for the weekend. Trophies were provided by Tom "Mr Recycle" Broeski who created a great set of plaques from older ones.
We had a nice raffle that was running all weekend long. We had 9 US F3J Team shirts that I donated, a Horizon Hobby-donated Radian, and a pile of Airtronics servos and BRASS hats courtesy of Tom Broeski. A nice treat was having Daryl on-hand to autograph the shirts which made it special for those who won them.
While everyone was a little soggy at the end of the weekend, we did have a great time and had an amazing ESL competition. See you on 5/19 at Warrenton.
Insert Image: 
Action on the flight line.
Insert Image: 
Anthony Procino 2nd Place Sportsflyer
Insert Image: 
Dave Beach wins the Horizon Hobby Radian!
Insert Image: 
Daryl Perkins 1st Overall.
Insert Image: 
Daryl Perkins 2nd on Sunday
Insert Image: 
Neil Huffman 1st Place Sunday
Insert Image: 
Leszek 3rd Place Sunday
Insert Image: 
Josh Glaab Jr, 3rd Place Sunday
Insert Image: 
James Gifferth showing the colors of the official beer of the ESL!
Insert Image: 
Chuck Pinell, 1st Place Sportsflyer
Insert Image: 
Reto and Lenny battle it out!
Insert Image: 
Nice perspective shot (photo by Trish Glaab)
Insert Image: 
Dawn Huffman calling the flight groups!
Insert Image: 
Joanne Bustamante kept the scores rolling as well as timing for Luis
Insert Image: 
Luke Glaab "walks like an Egyptian" after coming up a little short on a landing. |
2012 HRSF/BRASS ESL Unlimited Season Opener
Forum Locked
Posted - 05/22/2012 : 9:47:18 PM
