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fprintf
9 Posts |
 Posted - 06/21/2004 : 2:38:56 PM
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Wow, what a day Sunday was. Too bad I missed Saturday, although by all accounts the mist in the morning and the wind in the afternoon made things challenging.
Sunday was a real adventure for me - which I summarized on my webpage/blog at http://fprintf.rchomepage.com as accurately as I could recall it last night. I'd sure like to read a recapture of both days if anyone is writing one up. Love the man on man format!
So nice to meet everyone from LISF and ESL!
fprintf
aka Stuart
aka Marauder built-up pilot who almost tangled with the winch line |
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Anker
83 Posts |
Posted - 06/22/2004 : 1:18:42 PM
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The LISF contest has always been one of my favorites. We only have to travel 4 hours to get there, and the last 3 years they have flown man-on-man, which probably is the “fairest” format. It is not just my favorite, because there were 9 fellow Team CRRC members there this year. Fritz Bien, Jose Bruzual, John Nilsson, Jan Kansky, Dave Walter, Bruce Schneider, Jeff Newcum, Miner Crary and yours truly. Mark Drela had signed up, but some creep had stolen both of his Multiplex transmitters out of his car the previous weekend, and he couldn’t get replacements in time.
Lodging is always a problem on Long Island, and it is not made better by having a major golf tournament the same weekend. Most of us stayed at a hotel a good distance from the field, Miner and I were lucky enough to be able to stay with family.
I met the rest of the gang at the “New Shiny Diner” on the Jerico Turnpike and we then proceeded to the field. There are soccer fields very close to the flying field, and every year there seem to be more kids and more elaborate facilities. This time there were vendor tents, ice cream trucks and lots of other stuff, not to mention apparently thousands of preschoolers and parents.
LISF had trouble getting the field mowed this year, and the mowed portion was much smaller than the field. The un-mowed portions had grass a tad lower than an elephant’s eye, and thick enough to totally bury a plane. The winch lines were really short, which made launches hard. To make it really challenging, Paul Bell gave everybody just one popoff, and that had to be in the first round! When we got to the field at 8AM there was a light fog and low overcast, The fog lifted before the first flight, and the overcast gradually cleared during the morning. The weather was horribly muggy with a cold front promised around noon. Paul called for 7 minute rounds until further notice, and the landings were 50 point graduated 6 foot tapes. To spite us, the last segment was labeled 0 points! The thermal conditions were dismal with low, iffy thermals. As the winds gradually picked up and the front passed through, the thermals didn’t get any better, at least not when I was up to fly. The 6th, and last, round was 10 minutes. Personally, I spent almost all the time at less than 200 feet playing small thermals, and totally missing my landings. The most exciting was the second round. I popped off and only had about 100 feet altitude. I made a desperate dash for the edge of the field where I found a tiny thermal that I worked ,and worked ,and worked actually making my time. The only person I saw all day at any decent altitude was Dave Walter, who at one point was flying directly towards a cloud that looked like it might be lower than his plane. It wasn’t, but it would have been interesting if it had been. During the final round Dave skied out completely. In one of the rounds, Terry Luckenbach put his plane into the woods. He followed the line to where is should be and couldn’t find it. Fortunately he has a Walston transmitter in it, and it led him to the same spot. He couldn’t see the plane from 6 feet away, that tells you just how thick the brush is. At the end of the day Dave was in 1st place Expert followed by Jeff Steiffel and Jan Kansky. The other experts were bunched up in our usual positions. Fritz in 6th, me in 7th, Jose in 9th, and John in 12th. In Sportsman George Hill did great and made 1st place followed by Bob Magee and Fred Tyra, Jeff just missed the wood in 4th, followed by Bruce in 5th and Miner in 7th.
Sunday was very different in just about any respect you can imagine. The day started out bright, sunny, breezy and cool. We measured the wind at 15MPH by the tents, so it must have been close to 20 at altitude. John Hauff was the CD and was kind to us and gave us a 5 minute round to warm up on. After that it was 7 and 8 minute rounds. While I was assembling my plane the score keepers, Cathy and Richard asked me if they could use my laptop. Cathy’s display had died. We needed to transfer the scoring program to my laptop, but I didn’t have a floppy drive, and neither did any of the other 4 available laptops. Eventually we had to send someone off to a computer store to transfer the floppy contents to a USB flash drive. Something to keep in mind, floppy drives are getting very scarce. All of this was pretty distracting, but I did get my plane assembled with a full load of ballast. This is my Aegea Mantis with the new X tail from Phil. It is the original run with a substantial sub fin. The first round went fine, but the wind sure was strong and I was glad I had ballasted. The second round was a repeat of Saturday, spotty lift and down early. To stretch my time I flew straight out until I ran out of altitude. When I got to my plane I could see that the subfin had caught in the grass and the rudder was creased and partially broken off the fin. Bummer. Jan had foam-safe CA, which I immediately used to bond my fingers to the skin. It worked great there, but didn’t really want to bind the skin to the foam. It wasn’t pretty, but I did manage to get it bonded well enough to keep flying. Round three was not memorable in any respect, but in round 4 I was paired off with Fritz; just the two of us. Fritz launched first and took off downwind. I had a mediocre launch and took off after him. I caught a few bumps, but not enough to keep me up, and I had the head back to the field. Then I hit terrible sink and could only watch as my plane gradually disappeared under the tree line and disappeared deep in the woods. I should have ordered that Walston transmitter! I took a line on the last position and Dave was kind enough to go out and help me look for it while everybody else had a lunch break. I tried to follow the line to the plane, but 100 feet into the brush I couldn’t make it further through the thorny tangle. I was also bleeding from several cuts. So I had to join Dave, who had walked around the worst of the shrubbery. Now I had no idea where the line was. This could take hours. The woods were crisscrossed by bike paths and Dave asked the first bikers he ran into whether they had seen a plane. Oh yes, it had landed on the bike path and they had pushed it to the side. It also appeared to be undamaged. How much luck can you get? We did have some trouble finding the right path and kept losing each other in the woods, but finally I saw it, and yes, it did appear to be undamaged. One flap was pushed down, but I couldn’t see anything else wrong. Of course I had forgotten to bring a wrench to disassemble the plane, but we were able to find an exit that I could get the plane out of, and also get a bit of lunch. I think it was Dave who suggested that I check the plane thoroughly, so I turned it on and all surfaces centered, so far, so good. But when I lowered the flap stick, only one flap came down. Apparently the new digital servo had burned out from pushing against the flap while we were looking for it. I was almost up to fly, so I got really busy replacing the wing. Fortunately I have two, interchangeable wings. After getting the other wing on the left aileron didn’t work. The wires had pulled off the plug. Then I managed to step on my transmitter antenna and broke that. The caller was good enough to rearrange the flight groups while I soldered the wires back onto the connector and got the wing tips taped on. I just managed to get ready as my flight group had to fly. Bruce was timing for me, and I did the thing I had done all weekend. Way out at low altitude, find a weak thermal, work it really, really hard, and I made my time. On the landing approach the plane started acting funny. The right flap wouldn’t come up and I ended up spiraling down to the ground. When I got to the plane, I had no control whatsoever. Back at the awning I got my ESV and plugged it in. 4.4 volts! It was a miracle that it hadn’t run out of battery power when I was way out and at altitude. Sitting in the woods with the flap pushed down had not just burned out the servo, it had also drained the battery. So I got busy replacing the battery with the one from the spare fuse. The next two flights went OK, but I was way, way out of the running. The rest of Team CRRC’s experts had problems too. John Nilsson managed to clip a tall tree on approach and then clip another just before reaching the field. His plane went in with a sickening thud, and I expected it to be demolished, but miraculously the fuse and tail were undamaged, and the only damage to the wing was cosmetic and could be temporarily repaired with tape. At the end of the day John Hauff won, Mike Lachowski was in second, and Terry Luckenbach in third. Fritz was the best CRRC expert in 6th, Jose was in 8th, John was in 10th, I was in 11th, Jan was in 12th and Dave was dead last Expert in 13th. Our Sportsmen had fared better. Bruce was in 2nd behind Luis Bustamante, and Jeff was in 3rd. Miner was in 9th.
Astonishingly, I only have to make minor repairs on my plane before it is as good as new. John has just offered to sell me his Walston receiver, which I immediately took him up on. I have also learned another couple of lessons: 1) Assemble the backup plane before you need it. 2) Check the battery when the plane has been sitting in the woods for a while. 3) Never be in too much of a hurry to check everything. My reward were two scores too bad to even be called throwaways.
Anker
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Jeff_Newcum
7 Posts |
Posted - 06/22/2004 : 6:32:11 PM
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Here's some pictures from the contest.
You can find more here.
Anker launching his X-tail Mantis
Jose flying with Leszek timing
Tony Guide and Luis Bustamante ready for another round
Mike Lachowski launching his F3B ship
The pretty Mantis fuse producer, Terry Luckenbach launching his own designed Supra that's based on the Aegea wing.
Jan Kansky launching his Sherm Mantis
Fritz Bien launching his Mantis...I mean Lucky!
Stuart aka fprintf launching his Marauder
Jeff "I'm getting hit!" Steifel launching his Ellipse
and the CD John "Don't break my line" Hauff
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aeajr
477 Posts |
Posted - 08/26/2004 : 12:08:32 PM
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June was a great deal of fun. Even if I did miss two rounds fishing my plane out of a tree. My poor overmatched Sagitta. After it hit the tree it did not fly right for the rest of the event, but I finished both days and that was my objective.
I got the coveted dead last but finished on day one, but was beaten out by Dennis on day two, but he had to break his wings to take that spot away from me.
All in all a great experience.
I just registtered for the September event. I might shoot to move up one spot for September, but I don't want to set my goals too high!
See you all then.
Best regards,
Ed Anderson
aeajr on the forums
www.lisf.org
www.RCezine.com |
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fprintf
9 Posts |
Posted - 09/01/2004 : 3:59:19 PM
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Hi Ed and all, I just registered on Ch#22 for both days as well, although I do not yet know if I will make both days again.
Not to worry, the Marauder is in quite a few pieces still so I will either have to fly my Highlander foamie or a new 70" aileron plane I was given this past weekend. Either way, you will not have to worry about last place as I will happily earn that honor. :)
See you later this September! Let's hope the weather is a bit better this time on Saturday, otherwise we just might have to head to the North or South shore for some sloping action! :) |
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LISF i - what a blast!
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