Carl Strautin hosted my Sydney visit and it started with a birthday breakfast on Manly beach with gorgeous girls. We then went to fly all that Saturday and I spotted a group of kangaroos sleeping in the tall grass close to where I had landed. THought they were deer (which we are used to seeing but when they popped their heads up instead of antlers I saw ears).
The contest was similar weather to last time I flew,cool overcast and windy. We had about 10 winches all with mono. Man on man and everyone in the group solid pilots. It was clear immediately that Allan and Matt Lowe and another Matt were on their game. Matt Lowe was flying an Extreme and Matt a Pike Superior V. Not sure what Allan was flying I think a Stratos V (probably have all three mixed up!). There were a few Pikes there and a some wood 2ms mixed in. 24 pilots in all. Carl was flying his Shandy (a sharon Vtail) and it helped. Span and visibility both played a role that day. Matt Lowe was goiing to switch to his Pike Superior X tail but had just refitted it and had some plugs in the wrong spots. I was on my game as well and put up thee 1000's. ON the fourth flight the air was clearly good so was looking at a gimme flight, but the line snagged and I popped off. I quickly circled around for the catch and handed the plane to Carl who was throwing for me in the wind. I apparently had slipped the canopy back off its pin on the catch becasue about 20 feet up, off it came. The rules here are lost part zero flight. they decided on a mercy throw out so I was possibly back in the game, but on the next flight I managed to draw another snagged line and then a broken line for top of 200' in cold air. Carl and Matt both managed the average 600' (I checked a launch with my Picolario for the heck of it) and caught the down wind run on their flights. I hit a 100 landing but was short about 6mins. A bad day on the field is still a good day and I had a great day because my host and a total best friend won. (he'd have beat me anyway, as last time he only lost by 2points to me, and did that by being greedy on time taking two more wraps on the clock and then ending short of the landing zone. He's world class F3J and me...I just travel a lot :-) Wish you guys could have been there...I need more guys to beat now that its LSF4 time :-) Ilost the contest but WON my LSF3....paper signed first by Ben Clerx (past F3J world champ and last by Carl Strautin and CD Bruce to finish my level 3...doing it in style :) New Zealand adventure this week! Gordy 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
