Re: [RCSE] how high really
The highest that I've verified was around 1850 m if I remember correctly, a couple of years ago with a Picolario. I used to put my Casio altimeter watch in my XC, and it had a max altitude, along with max rate of climb and summation of altitude gained.The highest I recorded with the watch was about 5500 ft AGL, and a typical summation of climbs was in the vicinity of 30,000 feet for a full day of flying. A more interesting point was that I had almost 2 miles of slant range once... The funny thing was on the highest flight with the watch, I knew that I had been considerably higher previously, but hadn't a way to quantify the height. One thing about XC. Back when I used to do a bit more of it, I would try to get out to the flying site a day early so that I could practice. The primary goal of the practice was to get comfortable with flying at extreme altitudes. When you get comfortable, you want to be finding your next thermal at about the height that the stabs disappear. It starts getting hard to fly when the fuselage disappears, and all you are flying is a miniscule little hair line way up there. It is easy to get into heading PIO's at this height due to the lack of orientation feedback. I remember at least once where I accidently had turned the airplane 180 degrees without realizing it (symptoms of "TOO HIGH"). Some day I'll have time to get back to XC and play some more. It is one of the most pure forms of soaring. No launching wars, no stupid spearing of landing spots, just pure flying and soaring. Joe PS New email is joewurts at sbcglobal dot net. I don't check this one very much anymore (massive spam influx). RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
RE: [RCSE] Notes on the F3J WC (long and disorganized, part 1)
I'm not sure what the story is. I've gotten emails from a few that read the post, and a few that say the email is empty. I suspect that I sent out a post that might have been too long. The post does appear on the Yahoo groups list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soaring/message/143768 Joe PS I've not written the 2nd part yet. Most likely will be tomorrow before I get to it. BTW, this email address is "dead" and I don't use it except to send email to RCSE, I've moved on to: joewurts at sbcglobal dot net. "Darrell Zaballos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Hey Joe did you forget to attach something to this email? > >DZ > > _ > >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 4:27 PM >To: soaring@airage.com >Subject: [RCSE] Notes on the F3J WC (long and disorganized, part 1) > > > RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
[RCSE] Notes on the F3J WC (long and disorganized, part 1)
It has been almost a week since I returned from Slovakia, but this is the first time that I've had some free time to put some comments together. First of all, congratulations to Cody Remington the new Junior World Champion, David Hobby the first repeat Senior Champion, The German Senior Team, and the USA Junior Team for winning the gold medals! Y’all done good! I'd like to thank the unsung heroes that made it possible for the team to compete at the 2006 F3J WC. Without your support we would have been in serious trouble at the WC. We were fortunate to have four towers on the US team this time, and we needed every one of them. To all of you out there that supported the team, whether by donating money, buying t-shirts and/or raffle tickets, or helping out at the two practice comps that we had this year, a hearty thank-you! A big round of applause should go to Jim Monaco, who was the senior team manager/organizer/fund raiser. The team manager is typically a thank-less job. Jim took care of the preparations, worked the fund raising, and did a successful job of managing all of the details that were necessary for us to get to Slovakia with the stuff that we needed. It was a huge task, especially in that he has to get consensus from the pilots on methods/equipment from pilots, a task that I liken to herding cats. Not an enviable job. Thanks Jim for a job well done. We had a great set of towers with us. The senior team primarily worked with Phil Barnes and Frankie Burnoski, and the Junior team worked with Craig Greening and Chris Keller, although there was more than a little bit of mixing and matching going on. Both Phil and Craig have been to the WC in the past, and knew what needed to be done to make things successful. Phil took a lead responsibility for the lines and equipment and did a great job with the equipment that we had brought. Once Phil took ownership, I stopped worrying about the lines (a major thing for those of you that have worked with me at a WC in the past). Phil and Frankie went way beyond the call of duty in ensuring that everything was as good as it could be. Chris and Craig were doing similar stuff with the juniors equipment. The towers made it easy for the pilots to worry about just the flying and not the launching. One more thing about the towers. I've never had so much horsepower on the line before. In the past, I've been able to stall the towers if necessary. Not this time. We were consistently getting the quickest and highest launches on the field. Thanks guys, your hard work and diligence were a big reason why the US teams did so well. Finally, the junior parents did a lot of behind the scenes support and work. All of the parents contributed, whether it was running errands (thanks Hal for the light-weight spackle!), getting equipment, or organizing the towers and pilots for the round schedule. JoElyn Newcomb gets a special thank you for her behind the scenes planning. The trip started somewhat poorly, in that most of our luggage didn't show up at Vienna. I think that we had 24 pieces of errant luggage. Fortunately, the airline took our lost luggage reports and promised to deliver our luggage to the hotel the next day. The next afternoon they delivered 23 pieces. Of course, the missing piece was my suitcase, which had my tx, ballast, tools, clothes, etc. Fortunately Tom brought a spare tx along, so I spent some time that afternoon programming my aircraft into his backup tx. The airline said they had no idea where my suitcase was, so I was getting a bit nervous. fortunately it turned up the next day... The cute thing is that I liked the programming set-up that I had done on the field more than the original set-up, so I used the transfer capability to copy the new programs from Toms 9303 to my 9303, and used these for flying in the competition. On our last day of practice before the Martin Cup (2 day comp before the WC), the towers were complaining that some of the aircraft were not pulling as hard on tow as others. We worked the launch setup on the miscreant aircraft, but the towers said that there were still large differences. After a bit of experimentation, we determined that a big part of the launch was determined by who the thrower was. For a full tow or a winch tow, the launch is a bit less important, but when your goal is a 3 second tow, the throw has a large affect on the outcome. The result, I became the team thrower. This was a bit of an effort in the Martin Cup where we had eight pilots entered in the contest. After six rounds and the two fly-off rounds for the Martin Cup, I was certainly looking forward to the slower pace of the WC! The Martin Cup preliminary rounds had really nice conditions for most of the flight groups, which made it more of a launch and landing contest. This was reflected in the scores, to make the flyoffs, you needed to average 997 per round. The
[RCSE] F3J worlds
It is now the morning of the flyoffs. We get started at 10 AM, and will fly
four rounds of seniors and juniors. All three juniors are in the flyoffs, and
the jr team took GOLD!!! Go Jrs!!!
The senior team had some bad luck during the contest, with some freaky
equipment failures. Tom K. got his first throwout due to a ring failure on a
parachute. A post-mortem shows that the chrome got a micro-crack in it, and
the metal inside corroded, then fatigued and failed. It was a chute that we
had been using in the Martin Cup, as well as in earlier flights. Tom just got
the short straw. On a launch for Skip, we had the line break right in front of
the parachute (chute ended up with about a foot of line on it. It broke just
before the throw while under a bunch of tension. I was using my right hand to
lightly touch the line for directional guidance, and my right hand got a bit
sliced up when the short bit of line between my hand and the break went
whizzing by. It was pretty annoying at the time, but ended up being only
cosmetic in nature. I was somewhat lucky in that the slice on the inside of
the wrist wasn't deep.
My newest light Icon got in a mid-air in the 2nd round. The wing was sliced
clean through just inside the wing joiner box. Fortunately I was able to sort
it out and land it softly about a km away, and even more fortunately, it was in
a field of the proverbial tall grass. It took me several days to rebuild it,
using the time that I wasn't calling the jrs/srs to effect the repairs. Got it
done just in time for a late evening perfectly flat air flight, and it did the
job for me. Finally tested the structure on a test launch last night into the
wind. Only used 1.25 line for a safety link as I will not likely use the
model in strong winds. The rebuilt spar and wing performed nicely and broke
the 1.25 line about 2-3 seconds into the tow.
Our towers are performing wonderfully, we have been getting tows that are equal
to, or better than, the rest of the field. The launch advantage is especially
evident with the juniors. Frequently we have just been launching, then sitting
on top of the gaggle and waiting for them to take chances. I had probably the
best F3J launch of my life in my last flight. It was better than most F3B
launches, the zoom just kept going and going and The towers said that they
were expecting the 1.35 line to be breaking on the flight.
But, the best flights with the juniors have been when they run away from the
gaggle and hook up with the one big thermal far away. They have flown
wonderfully. The last part of the day yesterday ended up with some stronger
winds, which increased the luck factor in the scores considerably. Joseph
Newcomb was the recipient of the wrong place/wrong time award on his flight.
He flew an excellent flight, but he ran into some super sink at the wrong
moment.
We start the flyoffs at 10 AM (1 AM California time), and should be done by
about 2 PM. Should be a lot of fun to see how it all sorts out. We have done
some recruiting from other teams to help out the 3 jrs in the fly-offs. I'll
be calling for Joseph, Skip for Cody, and Tom will be the caller for Casey.
Wish us luck!
Joe Wurts
Proud USA team member
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[RCSE] F3B WC finished
We are finished with the contest, finally. The US team finished in third
place. The Germans finished first, and the Swedes finished second for team.
Individually, I ended up in seventh place, Mike Smith was in eighth, and Gordon
ended up in 23rd. Gordon had some bad luck in both distance and speed today,
with a throwout in distance, and a cut in speed. This dropped his position
considerably compared to what we expected going into the last round. Mike had
some good air in speed, and I had some good air for the launch in speed, but
not so good air on the course. I flew the course very well, and got a 17
second run. Mikes run was smoking fast, but had some challenges in crowding
the safety line. He ended up with a 16 second run, one of the faster runs for
the round. My distance was a potential nightmare, and I was very lucky to get
a tie for the 1000 pt score. Gordon had a similar type distance run, but was
not so lucky as I was.
The team score was in doubt until the very last run. One swiss pilot cut in
speed, but did not get a horn on the finish, so he got a reflight. On his
reflight he had some reasonable air, but cut base A. All he had to do was to
get a 19 second run and the swiss team would have gotten third place... We
got lucky, finally!!!
The Germans ran away with the team trophy, and the Swedes had second place with
some very good flying. It was very good to see how things have changed in four
years. The standard of flying has improved dramatically since the last time
I've flown at the WC, in 2001.
Thanks to everybody that supported the US team for 2005. The help we had in
practice was invaluable. Special thanks go to the CVRC club for hosting the
team with a two day practice, as well as the TPG club for allowing us to use
their field for our one day practice sessions.
Regards,
Joe Wurts
Proud USA F3B Team member
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[RCSE] Friday afternoon at the F3B WC
Groundhog day #5... The US team is currently in 3rd place overall, but with a very precarious lead over the fourth place swiss. There was a lot of rain this morning, so we didn't get started until about 2PM today. Yesterday was a bad news/good news kind of a day. Duration was very challenging, both in the morning and afternoon rounds. I was the unfortunate recipient of the wrong time/wrong place award for both duration rounds. Gordon and Mike both maxed out for their duration slots, but both had to work very hard for their maxes. They did some amazing flying in their slots. We had another good round of distance in round five, where we only dropped one lap total for our three flights. They decided to finish the evening Thursday with speed, which meant that there would be almost zero cycling as there was nothing happening for the previous few duration rounds. This was a good thing for the US team, as we have been cursed with the bad sink award for virtually all of our speed flights, excepting Mike and Gordon in round 1. We redeemed ourselves, with a 16, 17 and 18. The returning champion Andreas Bohlen has flown extremely well during the contest, and until I saw Andreas Herrig fly, I thought that Bohlen was at the pinnacle of F3B performance. Both fly speed without perceptible mistakes, but Herrig does things with his own design/build plane that does not seem possible. The German team has been flying with admirable precision, and have the team award locked up... Gotta go, Joe RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
[RCSE] F3B WC
It is now groundhog day #4... We do have wi-fi access at the field here, and I have a laptop, so I can do some emails occasionally. It is now Thursday morning, just before the start of duration for round #5. The US team has had some challenges this year. Round four yesterday was especially painful. Mike hooked the launch chute in duration. The chute got stuck in the elevator. Fortunately, the plane incurred only a little damage so he could fly it in the other two tasks of the round. In distance, Gordon had a very good flight going, at least until a tree abruptly moved to intercept his flight path. This cost him at least a couple of laps along with a safety penalty. On the good side, the US has been doing pretty well in distance. It took as a little bit to get dialed in though. The conditions have been quite challenging. The launches have been almost a 90 degree crosswind for every day, and I think today will be the same. Evidently the runway isn't aligned for the winds in early August, as I think it was the same for the F3J WC here in '02. The speed course has been a learning experience. Most of the speed has been with a quartering tailwind on entry, with the launch being in the direction opposite from the course. Between the atypical speed course orientation, poor air on course, and that the far turn horn being more of a confirmation of crossing the far base rather than a marking of crossing the base, we have not done as well in speed as we were expecting. Mike and Gordon both had a good first round speed, but have had no help since then.. Even duration has been quite challenging. On one flight, Gordon had a made to order 10 minute flight. 10:04 would not have been possible... I was up for round three duration right after a thunderstorm, and made the ten minutes without any help from those annoying thermals. I did two circles during my large transit of the field, and regreted doing both of them. A lesson in not touching the sticks. Gotta go, I'm up for duration now. Joe RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
