What I did this weekend
Saturday's F3F race in SoCal was an absolute blast. I was the Contest Director, and for the days preceeding the event, the weather forecast was extremely uncertain. Every 12 hours, NOAA would issue a dramatically revised forecast, and in their discussion pages, they freely admitted that they had no idea what the weather would be like for this Saturday. As the CD, you have ultimate responsiblity for picking the right hill (that faces the right wind direction). This Saturday was very uncertain, but my wife and I prayed mightily for wind, and wind we got!
We had a GREAT turnout, with 19 pilots ignoring the forecast and coming out to have a
great day with us. Specially glad to see all the new faces, Target, Harry, Doug, Bob M. and others.
One the way to Vincent (my prefered slope, and the one that I annoucned the night before), I called to see if anyone's there early. I get through to Doug Cook, and he's telling me it's blowing hard from due East! Thanks to the miracles of cell phone technology, we got the entire group turned around and headed to our alternate site, Parker Mountain in
record time. I think everyone was topside and getting ready by 10:30AM. Awesome.
Check out the photo of Doug Cook and Joe Zepeda feeling the wind when we got to Parker! Winds started around 25mph and then picked up to a bit above 30mph and stayed there all day. Tasty air.
We quickly got the course set up, got everyone's frequencies and entry fee, then had the Pilots Meeting. We decided (okay, "I" decided) to have a separate Round Zero so that people could get dialed in (the fact that I had two unflown planes with me that day had nothing to do with it, honest :-) Dave Bates was first up, and was going REALLY fast, bending the wings on his Cohen F3F on every turn, until he cut, ouch!
Shortly after that Bill DelHagen got a juicy 37.02, still in Round Zero.
Joe Wurts showed the hesitant where/how to land (Parker is unique), and then Round 1 began in earnest. We flew double rounds to minimize landings. At the end of the day, that seemed like a good decision. We landed 126 times all together, and only had one damaged nose from landing waaaayyy out behind the next ridge over, and two striped servos that I'm aware of. All three planes were repaired slopeside and
remained competitive. I am really pleased with the way everyone landed today. Great job everybody!
But who cares about landing... F3F is about flying! And fly we did. Joe Wurts SMOKED us all with an early 32.66 in Round 1, and then Rey peeled off a 37.15 in Round 2. We realized that the potential to shatter some records was there, so we made a minor adjustment to the course and triple checked that it was 100m long (it was a tad short to begin with). This made the bases more interesting, due to the shape of the slope, but it didn't seem to phase anyone and we continued to get some great runs.
In Round 3, new guy Harry_S pulled off a blistering 41.59 with a feather light unballasted carbon Banana that he's only flown only a couple of times. This is when everyone was filling their planes with as much lead as they could hold, Pretty cool!
Round 3 & 4 started out good, with runs in the low to mid 40's until poor Alexi stepped up to fly and the wind suddenly shifted hard to the north. His promising low 40 turned into a painful 57, followed by a 56. It was this pair of runs that really killed his final standings, and clearly shows one of the risks of double round flying. Sorry Alexi!
Right after Alexi and then Joe Wurts, the air remembered that we were trying to race, and came back in due east and stronger than ever. Which was when Rey decided to fling out the Arkanj and got some sweet smooth air and nailing a 38.54 with the wings bending BIG TIME the entire 10 legs of the run. He had some serious energy on that run. Round 5 started strong, with Dave Bates getting a 39, which was his just reward
after flying a really strong round 4 but getting a cut. Round 5 was nice vindication, and I'm sure it was his highlight of the day. It didn't last long though, as Joe Wurts shook off that nasty north wind feeling and turned in a juicy 37.41, easily winning the round.
Then Dan Field quieted the friendly bantering with a perfectly flown 37.65 in Round 6, and there you have it. Six full rounds with some fantastic racing.
I want to thank everyone for ignoring the forecast and trusting that the wind would be plentiful and the day enjoyable. The flying is fun, but the people really make it worthwhile. Also, special thanks to Phat Vu whose plane turned out to have some pre-existing damage and was unable to fly. Phat stuck around anyway and helped out greatly on the poles. Thanks dude!
Cheers!
Nathan Woods
SCSR > CD
Footnote: Dan Field brought back a Team USA flag from the Viking Race, and planted it in the pilots box. That was a cool thing to see there. The wind was strong enough to give the flag some weathering and character.
Full results posted here:
- www.rcgroups.com (The discussion thread starts here with weather discussion, then the subsequent pages get into the results and photos)
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