Contest Day Three

Well, I am not the best at upkeeping blogs! Two rounds for me are in the books, a third this afternoon in about 4 hours, and the final preliminary round tomorrow.

For the contest the weather has tempered somewhat, either that or we have become acclimatized completely! It does not feel as hot, the wind is more moderate, and the air seems to be just a little smoother than it was during practice.

I feel the Canadian flyers have performed well for the first two rounds, without many significant mistakes in our flights. The style this year to my eye is to fly big, Onda, CPLR etc. are flying quite huge flights. The rolls are stretched out and quite slow to fill the long lines. Flight speed is not fast, and distance is no closer than 160m. Some flyers were flying even bigger and further out, and do not present well, but still scored quite good. A few of the "big guys" who don't normally fly that style seem to be trying to adopt it in an effort to pick up some extra points.

Personally I do not like the looks of this style of flying, as it takes out a lot of definition in rolls etc. which to me is a big part of pattern, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do!

The percentage of electric models is enormous this year. I have not seen all the lines fly, but from those I have seen fly I would guess something around 70-80% of the pilots are using electric power. Mostly split between Hacker and Plettenberg, with some Axi etc. filling out the bunch. If you consider inrunner to outrunner, to my ear it sounds as though there are more outrunners being used. For glow motors, YS is easily the most dominant, with a few OS 200's in use as well. I heard that Onda has a new YS 175.....not CDI, but I have no other information on it.

Another interesting development has taken place with the in flight noise score. In my 5 Worlds that I have attended this is the first one I recall judges actually using the in flight noise penalty against pilots. I think this is because many people are now using electric that even though they are still quiet, some are louder in the air than others and being penalized. Fortunately in F3A three of the five judges must apply the downgrade before it is actually taken into account, so most people avoided an actual downgrade. One pilot from Argentina was not so lucky, his model was extremely loud in flight (Hacker inrunner) and was penalized by 3 judges. He also failed both his initial noise check, and his recheck, so he will likely lose that flight anyway.

There is lots more to talk about, but I am out of time for now, so a couple of pictures from the ready box of the second round yesterday.





Here I am about ready to go

Nedim hanging onto the Xigris during the sound check, I test around 85 dB.

Austrian pilot Helmut Dansagmeuller (sp?) with his own design model. Similar in profile to Mayr's Osiris, but this one is bigger!