Season’s End Southern California Soaring Club’s (SC2) has been running a Series of HL competitions now for the Last 2 years. This year we had 8 scheduled comps in 7 different locations, plus IHL Festival at Poway. Those of us in the DLG Mafia also had 5 or 6 scheduled practices.
We had our last comp on Sat. Nov 9 in interesting conditions at Paramount Ranch. The first 2 rounds were dry and the last 3 were flown in intermittent drizzle. Winds were calm. There was light lift all day. Nowel Siegal was first in Open class over John Erickson and Bill Watson. Our only entry in Sportsman, Greg Cueva had the top score and won overall. Just a couple of observations here: First, our Sportsmen/Open division has worked pretty well for the last two years. Larry Pettyjohn won Sportsmen overall last year and won for the first time in the open class in April of this year. Greg Cueva soloed in July of 2001, flew his first HL competition in the fall, flew all year this year as a Sportsmen, and had high score overall, winning the last contest of the season against a good field. Greg was a Dominant winner in the Overall Sportsman Class this year. Second: Polyhedral models won 7 of 8 contests. Flapped poly models won 6 of 8 contests. Aileron models were flown by many of the entrants, including Wurtz and Greening. John Erickson had a rather easy win over Wurtz in May at Poway and Wurtz returned the favor at Santa Clarita in October. In the last 3 SC2 HL comps Wurtz has entered, he is 1 for 3. Greening also flew at Santa Clarita and aside from Monster launches, he had a bad contest. For the year, John Erickson flew to a well-deserved overall victory, which included his win over Wurtz. For the second year, Bill Watson was a close Second. After a 10 year layoff, Mike Bame came out of retirement to take Third place for the season in the last heat, of the last round, of the last contest of the year. Conclusions: First, Having a Sportsmen class gives a place for newcomers to start in HL and compete with other flyers at there own skill level. It is also a place for old re-treads to get back into competition and re-develop their competition skills as well as learn the event. If you are fortunate enough to find a fine young competitor like Greg Cueva, take the time to nurture and teach him. Second, notwithstanding other opinions expressed on this forum, the facts show Flapped Poly models are fully competitive in all of the HL tasks I have ever seen. There are 4 or 5 excellent designs available and all have weak and strong points. Pick the model that best suits your style. I have been told that there is a lot of interest in my Photon Design which is currently out of production. If you would like to buy a Photon if they were available, E-mail me and let me know. If there is enough interest, I will look around for another vendor. Jerry Krainock [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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.
