Wow, just got home to San Diego. Man that's a long drive. For some reason coming home takes twice as long as going.
What an event. This was my first time for F3F in Mammoth and it was certainly worth the effort. I had taken Gary's tip a couple of years ago and managed to get up there for some fun flying, but without either a radar gun for DS or beepers for some turns, it was hard to judge the potential of the hill. I think times in the 30's show that this site can deliver. Dan's smokin 34.xx was simply amazing. I think just about everyone had some good and some bad that an inland mountain slope provides. Feast or Famine x 10. Nathan's launch when he couldn't get his plane to actually go down even though he was pointed in that general direction as he promptly went from eye level to 500 feet in about 3 seconds was a highlight for sure. The silky smooth landings on Sunday were a nice addition as well. After we moved the cars from Sat to Sun, the top part of the slope became more laminar on the backside and made for some precision perfect Torrey Pines style landing. Sat, however, could be a bit bumpy (as my crunched wingtip attests). The DS is truly great. With the evening air starting to ebb, we still got some 170's without much effort. I can only imagine that site with the wind we had earlier in the afternoon on Sat. Future: I think we better get a pre-registration out for next year. With proximity to every kind of lodging and food choices, great alpine atmosphere, loads of other activities for the family, Mammoth is really a great spot for a large two day event. Thuro has promised to bring some Austrians over and I'm sure we could coax some of our other currency rich Euro friends to visit as well making this a true international event. The RaceM likes the mountain air. I never flew more than 17 oz wing loading even though it was blowing 30ish or more at times. I flew an abreviated alpine dive course out on top of the double chin slope and easily made it back to eye level within a few seconds of the finish. Since sometimes it was on, and sometimes off this essentialy gave me substantial advantage to be in the 40's almost the entire comp with one 30 and one 50. Not hero work by any stretch, but consistency wins in this case. No cuts help as well because of flying so far out, I certainly waited for the beep or risk disaster. Overall, very fun, very good vibe and great fishing on Monday morning as well ;-) Bob 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. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
