This our seventeenth classic contest was in doubt as the forecast
for the weekend wasn't encouraging. Winds of 15-20 knots were
forecast with morning showers. The wind was forecast to abate
during the day. We arrived at the field to setup the flightline
to find other pilots already on the field and flying in winds
of about 8 knots.
Scheduled to start at 10.00 am. the contest started at 10.30 am.
some thirty minutes late .... better late than never they say.
The wind by this time had increased to about 12 knots and a couple
of pilots had decided that their light models wouldn't be able
handle the increasing winds.
The task was 7 mins in 9 mins working time
The first heat saw a longest recorded time of 5.37 ..... by Don Berry with his new Pike. There didn't appear to be a lot of thermals around. By the third round a few spots of rain were falling but at last the flight times crept up to 7.00 mins but the gusty winds were to persisted for the whole day making accurate spot landing difficult.
However the rounds proceeded and we were heading for lunch after two rounds but ...... Our clubrooms had been broken into a week or so ago and amongst other things stolen was the gas bottle off the barbeque. The bottle had been replaced but it hadn't been noticed that some pipe fittings had also gone missing. So whilst a search party was out trying to locate some replacement parts, we flew on to complete three rounds.
Scoring was being done by my daughter Cassie and although this was the first time she had operated the scoring programme the results to round three were on the board before we had started lunch. Well done Cassie.
The barbeque was superb as usual ... thanks to the cooks of the day. Flying commenced again after a forty five minute break.
We had progressed through the three rounds in the morning at such a good pace that we had time to fly an extra round in the afternoon making a total of five rounds.
There were some misfortunes during the day with Wayne Tschirpig losing a wing on launch with the normal results to the now dragless fuselage. Peter Wiadrowski damaged his model and retired as well.
The scoring was close with the top fliers until the last round
with a number of pilots holding first place for a while..... however
in the end the contest was won by Chris Carpenter with a loss
of only 26 points ..... he also won the spotlanding trophy with
475 points out of a possible 500. See photo above.
Congratulations to all the place getters and thanks to all the persons that came to compete.
I for one will be there next year..... Eddie the Eagle.... CD
The complete results are as below.
1 Chris Carpenter 982 1000 992 1000 1000 4974 2 Max Newcombe 890 1000 948 1000 957 4795 3 Trevor Schultz 954 1000 1000 802 1000 4756 4 Paul Moorfield 1000 991 1000 1000 730 4721 5 Gary Whitfield 820 860 1000 928 1000 4608 6 Lester Vine 812 986 912 1000 857 4567 7 Paul Clift 740 946 1000 811 1000 4497 8 Don Berry 1000 864 944 704 858 4370 9 Jeff Kempster 1000 812 808 765 960 4345 10 Joe Rufenacht 1000 992 864 815 617 4288 11 Mal Pring 694 788 946 608 921 3957 12 Jim McDougall 636 736 864 611 911 3758 13 Murray Scott 765 1000 355 535 942 3597 14 Malcolm Baxter 806 447 579 705 585 3122 15 Peter Wiadrowski 955 414 775 0 0 2144 16 Wayne Tschirpig 623 0 0 0 0 623Did not fly ... Ian Moreland ... Peter Lally ... Dean Martin ... Bob Watson.