So, about that midwest air... The guys were saying the air in Muncie this year was as good as it gets. Let me tell you, it was damn good sometimes. Fun ones, ya know: like when you're cored and you're trying to keep the speed up so as to prevent the unfortunate stall, then realize just how much down you are giving. You ease back on the stick...only to find the plane slow to a sustained 2mph horizontal and 5mph vertical. Hook, sky, hook, sky. Punch, read, drop, throw, punch, hook, sky..... The way real air is supposed to be :-) Beautiful air back there, and some of the boomers were every bit as good as Poway has offered in the past. So that describes an up-cycle in the best air Muncie reportedly has to offer. As Skip said in his F3J report, the good air offered some very easy reads for us. Far off the field, someone had placed a mylar streamer on a pole. This thing was showing feeds like a freakin computer. It'd drop, then rise above the pole, and then point straight downwind. It was easy to infer both strength, speed and distance to the air as the streamer changed heading. The prevailing wind was from the East for us Monday, and it was generally light and steady. Conditions deteriorated from there. Not only strength, but geometry and duration of the lift is different than what I've seen before. I've seen stuff shear at altitude, I've seen other stuff detach from the ground preventing entry from below. This air was different, and was consistently a pain in the a$$. Reading became very difficult for me, as following shifts and feeds to their logical conclusion most often yielded nothing. Following my instincts to areas I felt were going to be productive was more often than not a mistake. Even when I or my callers would get me to the right spot, my trusty kluge would rarely go up. It was finally handling OK again, but based on neutral air times, I know my sinkrate is higher than it has been in the past (chuckies do tend to lose a little when they get long in tooth.) This kind of air really hones your ability to fly smooth, and I feel like my thumbs are better than they've ever been. Launch is back too, but if you can't go up, you can't stay up. Being unable to read is bad enough, but it gets pretty disheartening when you get great altitude on launch, core air, aviate well and still don't go up while others around you do. The good news is that although I did get schooled by the Muncie air and the midwest pilots this year, spending a half day in really tough air taught me a lot. We only get fleeting glances of truly weak air in SoCal, and my strength has always been working the light stuff. Back in the corn fields, I look even more like a hack than at Poway, but trust me, nothing went unnoticed. I think the trip may become one of those milestones to look back on as a critical step in development. The generally good air at home has enabled me to become wasteful with energy. True, if I were to stay in Cali, the fresh insight into light air may yield unimportant gains, and it would be much more productive to tackle the windy/turbulent areas. However, as the patriarchs have shown us (even you Art), true skill is having the depth of experience to excel in all conditions. This trip may make the morning 1000's come a little easier in SoCal, but the real payoff will be in subsequent out-of-state events. This experience has strengthened my resolve in another area as well. I've proposed that the eventual F3K team selection process include performance at both the NATS and the IHLGF as prequalification and then a dedicated team selection over a third weekend in a third state with assigned timers. Scores from all three events would be used to select the team. Besides being cumbersome and possibly pricey, many of my peers and mentors have concluded that the IHLGF is good enough or that the selections should just be held in SoCal because in all likelihood two thirds of the team will come from here. If we were to field a team most proficient in SoCal air and then send them to an event in air like the Midwest, we may be sorely surprised. I do think Joe and Paul would have still taken first and second in Muncie, but as you know, these two are in a class by themselves and we can't take things for granted (such as do they want it or not?) I've prided myself in light air performance and yet got veritably schooled this week. Not a big surprise considering my inexperience, but the team I would like to represent the US at the F3K WCs would excel in all conditions. I can't think of a single person who wouldn't be rewarded in one way or another by a trip to Muncie. Whatever your intentions are, you will come back a more developed stick. But if you're going there to bring home the wood, you'd better bring the lightest, floatiest thing you can get your hands on. And you'd better know the thing well enough to be able to guide it like a flatbed truck carrying a pile of eggs over the Ortegas. But you'd better bring the wind ship too, so you can show them how to do it when the conditions get fun :-) Derek No Skip, no excuses...17th was where I deserved to finish :-( RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
