SEN 2162
Table of Contents – SEN 2162
- USA Junior Team Updates
- Nats Weather etc from FB
- Some Nat’s ’16 observation
- DQ Surprise
- Kudos to AMA
USA Junior Team Updates
From: Bob Stalick
Hi, Roger
Please inform your readers that I will be doing daily updates from the Jr. World Champs in Macedonia. These will be posted by the National Free Flight Society using the Facebook account FreeFlight Digest. First report will be tomorrow.
Bob Stalick, with the US Team in Prilep, Macedonia
Nats Weather etc from FB
(selected comments from Dan Berry and the McKeevers)
Dan Berry :
I have been to the Nats every year since 2005. This year, Monday to Friday was absolutely the best weather ever. It can only go downhill from what we had. Those who weren’t there missed out on a large time.
Mike and Valerie McKeever: We agree Dan Berry! The week before Nats was not so nice but then it turned around and gave great flying weather.
Some Nat’s ’16 observations
From: Aram Schlosberg
This year the Muncie weather was calm over the week but was very humid, including a thunder storm that didn’t materialize. The drift tended to rotate during the day, sometimes almost 360 degrees. Unfortunately, the center of the field is a large bowel, surrounded by higher grounds including an active local cemetery. Most the surrounding crops on the AMA property were beans and only a few models landed deep in the beans.
Canadians swept A, B and C (Jama Danier , Tony Mathews and Yuri Shvedenkov). All practice at a sod farm north of Toronto and have optimized their climb and glide performances. Another factor is flying the state of the art FAI models with LDA wings, F1Bs (but not the fully carbon covered wing) and an arrow-like climb of a carbonized C folder. B had 19 entries. In contrast A had five (adding Limberger, McKeaver, Van Nest and Marcos) and C had four (adding Morris, Parker and Mathis). The passage of time has been unkind to A and C, plus these models are not cheap.
There were an abundance of electric models: B-electric (19), E36 (25) and Q (14). (Could not find A-electric results.) The Q models included straight climbers (Drake Hooke), geared cruisers (Dick Ivers, who won) and a direct drive cruiser (me); the rest were AMA-like locked everything spiral climbers, including some E-36s. With the exception of Ivers, none used an on-board energy limiter. Q models without ELs were processed the afternoon before the contest by Jerry Murphy, using a Wattage plotter with a shunt between the battery and controller. Kudos to Jerry.
Finally, to an unexpected RDT. My Q carrying a Bauer RDT and a Morrell timer RDTed 10 seconds into its 38 second climb, landing at 22 seconds. This was probably due to momentary drop in voltage. The controller should be set to a soft cutoff, with 3 Volts per cell. Another cause might have been a distant lightening to the south, at about the same time, which could have generated a short current spike in the signal wire connecting the RDT unit and the e-timer. Shielding the connecting wires might also help.
Aram
Aram
I notice that while Tony won F1B he did not use the all carbon model and from FB while Charlie used technology to find his model in the corn it was not an all carbon model either.
How come all the F1B hot shots let Brian van Nest, an F1A sportsman ! with some older F1B models make the podium? Maybe it is not necessary to have the latest toys to be right up there. Good flying helps
DQ surprise – Lack Of Communication ?
From: Michal Pazdzior
Editor’s Note
We got this email from Michal Pazdzior, one of the sportsmen involved in the incident. It’s not our policy to give an opinion on circumstances such as this. In previous cases the FFTSC ruled on a dispute and they were included in the email.
But on observation is that there appears to be poor communications between the sportsmen and organizer. To learn that one had been DQ’ed by reading it online
Subject: A correction to The Report of the FAI Jury on Budapest Cup 2016
Dear Sir or Madam,
A correction to The Report of the FAI Jury on Budapest Cup 2016, Free Fly – category F1A, F1B, F1C, F1H, F1Q Szentes (Hungary) 23-24.07.2016.
In the point: Any incident or accident, the organizer wrote: “One incident occurred, one of the competitors of F1Q category were disqualified because he used his car on the field to collect the model. As it was against the previously stated rules, the consequence was disqualification.”
This is not true, in fact, the situation was as follows: I was driving by a car only by the road traced by the organizer (from the car park to the main road) as the access road to the field, then I left the car and walked a few hundred meters of the model, which was located between the buildings – ca 2 km from the launch site in fly off. I returned to the parking lot also by determined by the organizer road.
Mr. Gabor Milak, the member of the FAI Jury, were driving with me, through the designated by the organizer road, not the field.
The organizer/chief judge did not inform the competitor about the disqualification.
In addition, during the entire duration of the competition there was not a scoreboard.
Therefore, the decision of the organizer seems to be unfounded.
Please publish my correction in the Report of the FAI Jury on Budapest Cup 2016.
Best regards,
Michal Pazdzior
POL-6684
Kudos to the AMA for their lobbying efforts
Information on the AMA and FAA web sites about approval of a FAA authorization bill that essentially maintains our protected status with respected to FAA Regs and clarifies a number of details.
In the current confused political climate and drone phobia the AMA’s Govt Relations group deserves credit for making progress and looking after us.
…………
Roger Morrell