Actually a great narrative Joe. I had my first taste of XC (of any kind) at the NATS this year. Granted, the inbound course that was finally adopted for the scale guys was more like driving around a NASCAR track, but it opened my eyes to the potential fun and challenges of XC flying. Before acting as spotter for Pete Goldsmith with his 7 meter Nimbus 2 on the "race track", I went for an attempt on the outbound FAI course. The wind was blowing 15+ and I was flying an old beat up 5 meter Ka6E. This was really stupid, but oh what fun. I made it exactly 1 mile out into a soybean field, clocked forward speed at 5 mph at one point. In contrast, spotting for Pete later in the day on the closed course we were driving 55 mph and Pete was putting in camber so not to fly too far ahead. The potential for scale ships on XC tasks is phenomenal. Pete flew 6 laps on the course without stopping to thermal. There was some lift, but this was almost all aspect ratio and L/D. We were blowing by other competitors struggling to stay aloft. It always seemed to me rather silly to be standing in one spot and flying a 6 meter Nimbus which had an L/D of 40+, now I am hooked, but the problem here in the East are the wooded hills and developed real estate prevent us from setting up adequate courses with safe land outs.
JD PS: a very scale like LET Albatross 4 meter won the winch FAI XC in the very windy conditions. Endless Mountain Models http://www.scalesoaring.com email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Joe Wurts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 10:56 PM To: 'RCSE'; Bill Rakozy Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [RCSE] XC story Not much of a story here. 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.
