The 2014 Eastern Soaring League End of Season Thermal Duration Contest
The Eastern Soaring League�s (ESL) End of Season (EOS) contest was held during the weekend of 10/4 and 10/5 at Daniel Boone�s Homestead in Reading, PA. This site is one of the really historical contest venues for the ESL and has been in use every year since 1978.
In recent years, the EOS contest has evolved into a multi-faceted event that includes the last Thermal Duration (TD) competition of the year along with the ESL�s Annual Meeting and Championship Awards ceremony.
Friday�s flying found several ESL teams preparing for the upcoming US F3J Tour Finale which is to be held on 10/17 and 10/18 in Warrenton, VA. Team ESL-1 (Glaab, Bustamante, Lucke, Zyga) were performing multiple launches in the afternoon trying to get things to work smoothly. The Pinnell Pups were also on hand (Pinnell, Broeski, Hall, Sullivan) working out some technical difficulties. A large group adjourned to the Amads restaurant for a nice Indian dinner.
Saturday dawned with overcast skies and rain. The decision was made to swap the agenda for the day and have the ESL Annual Meeting first during the rain and regroup later in the morning when the weather was forecast to clear. The meeting adjourned at 9:30am and the flying started at about 10:30. The task for the day was to be all 10-minute flights with random (first 2 rounds)/ then seeded Man-on-Man flight groups. Given the gusty conditions the C-Delta landing task was selected.
Going into the weekend, many of the places in the ESL�s top 10 Expert and Sportsflyer standings were in-play and subject to change as a result of the weekend�s scores. Leszek Zyga and Josh Glaab were closely separated for 1st place. There was also a log-jam of pilots trying to break-in, or maintain, their spot in the top 10. In Sportsflyer class, Josh Glaab Jr had a strong lead, but he was not in attendance to defend his lead and Dave Reisinger was positioned well to make a run for 1st place in Sportsflyer class.
The weather conditions turned out to be very challenging indeed. Initially surface winds did not reflect a strong wind at altitude and several pilots immediately landed off-field (Leszek Zyga X-2 and Joe Melchiorre Maxxa) signaling what was to be a tough day for many. By round 3, most had ballast in their aircraft as the surface wind was gusting 15 to 20. However, by the latter rounds, the wind had calmed down to less than 8 mph with some light lift and more reasonable conditions. Dave Bradley Jr (Xplorer) had a tough flight when he picked-up a low-altitude thermal, put several minutes on his competition in the flight group, yet went just a little too far down-wind and ended up with a zero flight.
I started the first round well and won the group with my Full-Span Spread-Tow Supra. However, in round 2 I got a 3+ minute flight and took a substantial hit from Luis Bustamante (Supra Pro), who was looking to generate some ESL-competition-drama. Luckily for me, Luis only got a 4 minute flight to minimize the drama. After a couple of rounds I managed to get back into the top group and had a bunch of solo �shovel time� in rounds 5 and 6. Going into round 7 I had a large lead over Frank Strommer (Aspire), Alex Hall (Maxxa), and Steve Lucke (Supra which has not been in the woods) who were also in the top group with me. In round 7 I flew kind of poorly, couldn�t hook-up with some low altitude lift that Alex was working, and ended up on the ground first at 5:52 into the flight. Ay Carumba!!! Fortunately for me, Alex and Frank could only manage 7 minute flights and I had a large enough lead over Steve, who got a 10-minute flight but booted the landing, to win the day and also the season. Dave Reisinger (Shadow) won handily in Sportsflyer class to move close to Josh Jr for 1st place. John Pinho (Supra Pro) was 2nd, Stoil Avramov was 3rd (X-2) and Jeff Sandford (Egida) was 4th. In the end, Saturday was truly a day made for Man-on-Man competition soaring since nobody made all their times!!!
There was some significant carnage on Saturday. John Marian�s Vixen was destroyed when a V-tail broke on launch which also broke the tail boom. The resulting landing was very hard. Chuck Pinnell�s Supra evidently had a switch failure and also went in hard. All aircraft that went down off-field were recovered without damage however.
The contest was concluded around 5pm and a group took Steve Lucke to Stoppers to honor his contributions to the ESL.
Sunday dawned clear, but freaking cold. The car thermometer indicated 37 degrees all the way to the field. Frost was on the ground in some places. Summer was gone! The task for Sunday was identical to Saturday�s and we had 24 pilots on-hand for one last competition day for 2014. Dave Walter (Supra Pro) got out to a good start and was not phased by the rolling hills, low-level wind-shear, and variable landing conditions scoring a perfect 7000 for the day and grabbing 5th place for the season over Steve Lucke. Dave Beach (Supra Pro) was second, I was third (couldn�t land to save my life), Alex Hall managed to break a long-standing jynx and place 4th. At several points in the season, Alex has been in 4th place going into the last round only to have horrendously bad luck that usually resulted in him dropping many places in the final standings. This time Alex broke through and kept the �shovel in the shed�. Alex�s performance on Sunday netted him 10th place in the ESL edging-out Randy Everly. In Sportsflyer class, Stoil played spoiler to Dave Reisinger�s drive to win Sportsflyer class. In the last round Stoil flew against Dave, made a nice low save which Dave could just not get into, and won Sportsflyer class as a result. Stoil�s score on Sunday kept Dave just 42 contest points out of 1st place for the season (only about 20 seconds of flight time on the last flight!).
The ESL�s year-end scores can be found on the website at: http://www.flyesl.org/standings.aspx?standingsopts=|2|3
If you hover your mouse over the scores you can see which contest scores were used for the top 6 scores for each pilot. You can also hover over the place and see which scores were not used.
Overall, the 2014 ESL EOS contest was one of the most challenging of the season and provided for some excellent and exciting competition. I am looking forward to seeing everyone in 2015.
Thanks, Josh.
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Tom Broeski's plane stand
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Josh Glaab, CD Saturday
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Frank Stromer launching his Aspire. Frank flew the heck out of this plane all weekend.
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Tom Broeski launching.
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Joanne Bustamante receives her award for Outstanding Support of the ESL. Joanne keeps the scoring going for the ESL events.
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Heather Hall receives recognition for Outstanding Support of the ESL. Heather's award citation is for "Golf cart operation above and beyond the call of duty". Thanks Heather!
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Donna Strommer receives an award for Outstanding Support of the ESL. Donna's contributions include pioneering use of seductive tones to get pilots to the pilot's meeting. It works much better when she does it. :-)
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John Jenks was Bubble Boy on Saturday.
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Pete Schlitzkus, 4th Saturday.
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Dave Reisinger, 2nd Sportsflyer, Sunday.
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John Pinho, 3rd Sportsflyer.
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Stoil Avramov 1st Sportsflyer, Sunday.
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Duane Beck, 5th Sunday. Duane provided all of these great pictures.
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Dave Walter, 1st Sunday.
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Luis Bustamante, 9th Place ESL Championship
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Leszek Zyga, receiving Theresa's award for Outstanding Support.
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Alex Hall, 10th Place ESL Championship
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2014 ESL EOS
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Posted - 10/09/2014 : 8:58:45 PM
