I am not Cornholio. Daryl Perkins is Cornholio. His title now reads as follows: Daryl Perkins, The Great Cornholio, Ruler of the sky and Lord of the Calimari, W.C. 3x. That boy can sure fly them toy aeroplanes... Do you realize no one has won this event more than twice. Rolf Drecker won twice, back to back. Then came this guy from Local and blew'em all away. Three kills in a row. Must really irk the Germans... Hell, they invented F3B. (Who else could have ever dreamed up a way to mess up what was a really fun filled activity) You gotta hate F3B to fully enjoy it. I say that and you may think I'm pullin ur collective legs... I am not. You gotta hate F3B to really enjoy it. So all is right in the universe... Daryl is still king for the next two years... Good job dude. D.P. also another feather to his cap... The world record in speed ...14.07 sec. Espin Thorp had to step aside in speed but he did capture a new World record for distance... 35 laps. Second place went to Dieter of Germany. Dieter is fast and certainly knows his way around the speed course but if you look at the score sheet you will see where Dieter got busted... Spot landings. We in the USA seem to have quite an edge in that dept. The FAI 100 point hole is huge compared to AMA hole. Love that AMA 100 point hole. General Impressions: South Africa: Looks like Calif... High desert, hills, corn fields, wheat, fruit trees, coolish spring weather and big up air followed by big down air. The roads and freeways are fast and filled with BMW, Benz. All the big money cars were owned by the white folks. It seemed the more money you paid for your car the faster you were allowed to drive. Driving on the "wrong" side of the road was quite odd for the first few days but Scott and Paul seemed to jump right in like they had been doing it all their lives. We rented two motor cars, one was a five passenger mini something... It held only 4 of us, the other was a nine passenger mini bus. We stuffed our gear into and on top of both and suffered the two hour trip from the airport to the hotel. I am not bitchin, mind you, but we had just got off a 24 hour plane ride stuffed into a seat made for 3/4 of a person. You know the drill... Screamin kids... Bad movies... Bad smells.. Bad food... But hey, it sure beats the hell out of walking and besides Luftansa COMPED all of our gear BOTH ways. Maybe they just caved in to Scotts endless requests for freebies. I think we had 19 pieces of luggage. The pile was huge... The look on the face of the ticket agent told the whole story. Models and stuff came thru just fine... No dings etc. The hotel was first class. There were monkeys in the trees around our rooms and Peacocks squawking at night. Sweet smelling flowers would greet your nose as you walked from room to dinner. GREAT food, beautifully prepared and served. Plus no one got sick from eating or drinking the water. Beer was very cheap so it paid to try and get the other teams drunk out of their minds. But that strategy wouldn't work on the Swedes or Germans. (Too much practice) Airplanes: Can you say conservative planform? We saw high "Q" planforms kill off what might have been good scores, time and again. It looked like when in the heat of battle you need a plane that is so easy to fly that it will fly itself. Rock stabile and boring. No yahoos on launch or turn. An extreme example would be the Spanish Ship. I do not remember it's name but I'll not soon forget it launches. The plane itself was beautiful but every surface was fully elliptical... Looked like a Spitfire planform. Spitfire elevator, rudder and wing. 'T' Tail. The Spanish boys could not get a good launch to save their lives and it cost them dearly. See the score sheet. Aircraft weight did not really rear it's head this time. The Swedes had a toy that came in at 61 oz. plus or minus. Gordons Diamond at 65 ish. The Cobras were in the 75 to 83 range. Getting your time in the duration task was not an issue for most. There were lots of Cobras on the field and they did quit well all around. Easy to launch and easy to fly. Stu does have a good solution with that plane. I saw one V Ultra. South Africans had a nice plane called the Sangoma. I have no idea how it flew... Dieter built his own plane. Goood plane. Espin flew his Master Piece and the Swedes flew their own one piece wings. Looked really beautiful. Your USA team flew hot and warm. We had a few bad luck events that put the hurt on us big time. Gordon getting knocked out of the sky by a radio hit, Steve's plane on his last tow of the contest BLEW UP in the bucket. It was spectacular... Parts all over the place. But the zero that followed really hurt our team score as did the very low score from Gordons distance task. Joe took a hundred point hit when his plane fell into the safety zone when the line broke on tow. If you were to add in some reasonable scores for those events, we might have taken a second of third. But who knows. In a long contest shit happens to everyone on a more or less equal basis. You do the best you can and leave the rest up to the Gods of Soaring. The F3B Worlds is a long contest. After the first two days it begins to fell like Bill Muray's "Ground Hog Day". You want it to be over but it keeps on going and going and going. It is designed to wear you down, to make you not care, to make stupid mistakes and you do. It can not be helped. So you simply have to make fewer mistakes than the other guy and care just a little bit more. The general level of competition has gotten better since last cycle. (Two years ago) Most impressive were peoples launching skills. They are throwing their birds higher and higher. (He who launches highest wins) F3B flyers worry allot about launch. Oh my God, they are puttin twenty feet on us, we are fucked. Oh my God they are pulling more tension, we are fucked. Oh my God, they have better line, we are .... . Its the negative mantra... But it is worrisome when you believe that you are in fact getting out launched. F3B guys like to worry their fellow flyers. Speaking of worry, think about this: You have to fly 4 of your 6 rounds against Daryl. Now that is worry. Might as well just kiss your clean shinny ass good bye cause it is gonna get drug (Drug... past tense of drag) thru the swamp and saw grass. Planes that paid ultimate price: Barney. Oh my God... They killed Barney... You bastard. The US had 4 pilots. Each pilot killed one of their plane either before the contest of during. The before round zero kills go to Daryl and his good pal Barney, so named because the Corba and Barney share the same color scheme... Purple. It was a quick death but for Daryl at the time he could see his chances for a win... Flat out gone. Barney was D.P.’s great purple hope. There was help on the horizon but not for 15 hours. So Daryl had to worry... That boy can worry. He discussed his plight with those smilin Britts. He knew they had Cobras and lots of them. Would one of those Limey S.O.B.s part with one? Was there a sporting bone in their bodies??? Did they have a hair on their collective asses? Yes there was. Steve Haley sold D.P. his number 3. It had a busted tip but the fix was excellent so swap the Rx add a battery and go. Overheard as the cash and Cobra passed hands... “If win with this ship, I’ll quit” Steve Haley 1999. Those Britts are a class act with an evolved sense of good sportsmanship. Three cheers. Cheer.... Cheer.... Cheer! Joe polishes Diamond... It is a death we all do sooner or later, no mo lectrons. Ran it out of juice. Dead battery. Bad charger... Bad,, bad, charger, bad, bad, BAD! Inverted death spiral into and upside down pancake flat on a plowed field. Crashes of all kinds have a certain magnetic draw. Runaway cars, speedboats, Indy 500, Daytona, Reno Air Races, they all have big and small pileups and... WE HAVE TO WATCH. It is the crash vortex. It must suck you in. Rubbernecks... We must watch. Gordon is flying his Diamond while Joe is into his dance of death. Gordon watches Joe's plane... He can’t help it... But a loud distant sound catches his ear... Swoooosh... Pull on that e l e v a t o r , Now! Gordon ducked the full sympathy crash by micro seconds. Next we have Steve Condon flying his Cobra. It was his last flight of round six. His last flight of the contest. Just before Steve's launch, Dwayne and I had just done a line change and installed some fresh 60 grit line on to the small drum winch. The old line was a tad soft and had a bit of drum rash since it had been used 5 or 6 times. There was a full cross wind running at a good clip so he should be able to get one good last throw. Steve launched, hooked hard over to the right and drove far out into the north side... Pullin tension and lots of it. Mono makes a cool sound when it comes under tension. It screams and creaks. Our buddy Steve was gettin ... a ...t ow. He pushs over into the bucket and quickly pulls back to go vertical... Pow, crack, splinters, parts, explode, poof. Parts rain downward, wings, fuse, Vtails, flaps, spars. It was glorious. I think if you have to lose a plane then death by tow is the best way to go. But the zero... That’s the gift that keeps on giving. Not Steve’s fault. The plane just said no more dude, I ain’t playin. Turns out the leading edge had a micro crack at the mold joint. This was the result of various out landings in what might be best described as a sea of boulders. Out landings hurt planes at this contest. The micro crack got bigger and bigger and finally the whole leading edge unzipped on tow. Blam! Gordon got hit. Actually Gordo got hit three separate times once in duration and twice in distance. The one that killed him came on his last distance flight, round six. Can you say pain. It is in MHO unforgivable for a radio system in this day and age to pull you out of the sky and stuff your prize toy into some nearby planet. Nuff said. So much for the disasters. What about the girls and beer? First beer. Castle Beer... Light colored and refreshing. Cheap $0.85 each. This did present a small problem for the Aussie Team. I’ll say no more. Girls. Yes! Ill say no more. Cept the “Parts Dib” was quite unnecessary. I know you have no idea what a “parts dib” is... To bad, I’m not tellin. Good flyin and bad flyin. Yep there was plenty of both. Some guys flew real good, they won. Others didn’t fly good enough... They lost. Thanks Bozo... Why don’t you tell be somthin I don’t know, you worthless scrote. O.K. I will. Distance: Can you say COVER? As in, cover the bastard, don’t let him get away. Fly safe and cover. Solo ventures out into the great void of distance were not to be rewarded with good scores. Usually it was a poor to bad idea. Conditions were simply too much of a crap shoot to allow creative solutions. One had to get a good tow, head over to what looked like a good area, sit on them then start stroking laps. If you were to fly reasonable well you might be down by one or two at worst, or just fly as good and walk home with your thousand. Do not go for the big kill. Safe. Keep track of the pack and don’t let some guy sneak out and get lucky. I realize if you don’t fly F3B, this makes no sense. Oh well. Speed: Your going to get good air and your gonna get sink. But since speed was one large flight group, you had to fly without leaving time on the table. (If there was 16 second air you had to be able to fly 16 seconds.) (If you flew 17 seconds you would be leaving time on the table.) This of course implies that you can actually fly speed and do “know where the turns are”. This was really critical since the bell buzzer tone system had a small problem. Each turn at the sighting devices had two guys pushin the buttons. To get the tone BOTH guys had to push the button. A AND B. This caused long delays. So if you were counting on that horn to tell you where the line was .... You were way long on base “B”. I saw guys fly very long. Hey Bozo, how long were they? They were turning at the turnaround line. (50 yards PAST the base “B” line.) You just gotta “know” where the turn is with out the signal device. Someone suggested that the system was faulty. Maybe... But if you knew where to turn anyway, why would want to make it easier for the competition? Hey, take what they give you and learn to make it work to your advantage. Duration: The USA always does well in this area. Go up, stay out of sink, get your seven mins., spot land. Next cycle we go to 10 min duration. That might spread the scores out a little bit. Helpers: Bozo, Dwaine Lane, Paul Wright, we didn’t do anything cept keep them stinkin pilots in the air. Ground Crew jokes run rampid during the contest. Pilots are the targets of jokes, name calling and useless obscenities. Tim Renaud made a point of this in Romania... “It fells good to hit a pilot” Pilots never hear this stuff... Might disturb their limited concentration. Case in point: Take one reasonably smart pilot, measure his I.Q. then place a transmitter in his hands. Notice how the smart meter falls to about half scale. Its a fact. What else would account for the incredibly stupid things they do? Take some lessons from the Soccer Moms with a brain. I don’t have much else to say about anything else except for the warmest of thanks to our Hosts in South Africa. Best Worlds yet. Thank you Sirs. Your Friend Bozo RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
