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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