SEN 2276
- Data Analysis ?
- George drives in Germany
- The Rest of the Story …
- FAI Rules and Fun Stuff
- Looking for a Moose
Data Analysis ?
From: Ross Jahnke
Roger et al.
The Kiwi data is probably not enough to draw conclusions from, but oddly,
F1A shows the least variation over five years and an average of 50.91% in
the fly off. F1B shows marked growth in the flyoff moving from the mid 40%
range to the mid 60% range, and had the highest average at 53.63%. F1C was
surprisingly volatile due to the outlier 25% in 2012, and had the lowest
average percentage in the flyoff at 47.01%.
More data points are clearly needed, but I think this kind of long term
data is the only way to tell what’s really going on.
As for Gil’s comment, SAM designs aren’t much of a solution. Who wants to
fly a model specifically because it has mediocre performance? That behavior
is not in the nature of most FAI sportsmen. It would be like Usain Bolt in
a 5K fun run.
George drives in Germany
From:George Batiuk
Hi Roger,
In response to your query about travel in Germany: from where I am you can
reach almost a point in Germany in less than 8 hours. Add 4 hours or so hours to that, and you can be in 6 or 8 countries. Of course there are a lot more opportunities to fly in WCups here. That’s the reason for allowing 3 in countries outside Europe. But of course this only solves part of this problem, but it’s a start.
George Batiuk
The Rest of the Story …
This article originally appear in the San Valeers Club newsletter and talks about how the Isaacson Winter Classic named after popular F1A flyer Bob Isaacsom came about.
Bob Isaacson and the Isaacson Winter Classic
As told by Norm Furutani
During the early 80?s I worked for a small public high school district, only four schools. Two of the four were being closed due to declining enrollment. Fortunately, both the remaining schools had openings for a band director and I selected Leuzinger HS (Lawndale, CA).
Upon arrival, I saw the school had a model airplane club sponsored by the football coach, Bob Isaacson. Now this was an inherent problem, you see, football coaches think the football field is for football and band directors think the field is for half time shows. I was not disappointed, upon checking out the model club, I got the cold shoulder from Isaacson. At the next meeting I brought in a large RC sailplane I had recently built. At that time I was a happy and pretty competent RC glider builder/flier. This did get the attention of Bob and he realized I was at least a modeler.
I failed to tell him as a youth I was a very active free flighter, actually a California Air Youth Champion (beating out Bill Hunter!). We slowly warmed up to each other and while working with the kids, he realized I had some skills and I found Bob to be an exceptional world class aero modeler.
A side story that cemented our friendship: Bob and I were both department heads of our respective areas. Bob was P.E. and I was fine arts. We were required to attend dept head meetings, usually after school. These meetings were very boring, time consuming and usually about topics that did not apply to our subject matter. At one of these meetings, Ike and I were sitting together, Ike leans over and says, “if you ask a question that makes this meeting go one minute longer, I?m going to break your legs”. The next agenda item was on textbooks – I immediately raised my hand, like a tattletale school kid, “Mr. Tyler (principal), since Ike and I do not use textbooks in our classes can we be excused?” The answer was “sure” and we were out of there and I became a God to Ike!
As department heads, we were able to arrange our own teaching schedules. We arranged our conference hour and lunch together and that gave us almost a two hour, kid free, block of time in the middle of the day. Bob had a huge office in the smelly locker room and he acquired another desk. We placed them facing each other and for the next few years, we spent those hours together, every day, telling stories and building model planes!
We and our wives became great friends, went on vacations together, etc. By this time, Ike had converted me back to FF, rubber power because he said no way I was going to be able to run fast enough or long enough to fly towline. The ultimate Ikeism was to talk Ginny and I into a month long, model flying trip to Europe. By then, I was flying FAI F1B (Wakefield). The trip to Europe was very successful and I inadvertently won the FAI World Cup series for F1B (this is NOT the Wakefield Cup).
The big FAI FF event of the year was the Max Men International 14 rounder. More and more international fliers were attending this contest. Often during our daily break, we would pick up fliers at nearby LAX. The weekend before the MaxMen many would meet in Lost Hills to test fly and socialize.
This lead to the Winter Classic. During one of those lunch time sessions, it was decided we would sponsor a low key, fun contest, the weekend before the MaxMen. Bob wanted to call it “The Winter Classic” I said, how can we call it a “Classic” if it hasn?t happened yet? Bob said he liked the sound of it. Winter Classic it was. We added non FAI events, like AMA gas, P-30, HLG, CLG because these were events we liked to fly. First time, we had maybe 20 fliers. That first contest, we had a bonfire and roasted hot dogs. This was one of the first contests ever at Lost Hills. As we sat in near the fire, we realized someone had joined us and was not a flier, he was a local Basque sheepherder, spoke no English. We passed him a hot dog.
The contest grew in popularity. About five years in, we had a tragedy. Bob and his wife LaVera, on the way to another Lost Hills contest, were hit from behind by a high speed, drunk driver. It was with such great force, their mini van was sent over a chain link fence and into a canal. We hope and believe they died instantly.
We are now 28 years running. Roger Morrell graciously agreed to help. Numbers have steadily increased, we picked up an America?s Cup sanction and now, a partnership with the New Zealand modelers association allows us World Cup status. The past few years, including our wet one this year, we have had over 200 entries in FAI events and over 100 in AMA/NFFS events.
I think we have earned the name, Winter Classic. For our friends Bob and LaVera, “The Isaacson Winter Classic”.
FAI Rules and Fun Stuff
From: Jerry Murphy
It is a fact that the number of people currently flying the F1 event is significantly smaller these days. When I ran the Seguin TX finals we had to restrict the number of competitors (they were not Sportsmen at that time) to a maximum of 30 in each class. I think we all fondly remember the sight of a flock of models flying overhead in the same thermal.
There are several factors driving this reduction in the numbers. The first is one well known to the economics text books, that is price volume. Simply stated as the price of a product or service increases the volume of its sales decreases. The complexity of current generation models is another factor along with the advancing age of the sportsmen.
I am not attempting to engage folks in a debate on the FAI rules. In talking to past FAI competitors we have heard that many of these folks have older models in their shops that are not competitive in the face of the current FAI models. So, what if we could get these models back on the flight line again? The RC Sailplane folks are facing the same situation and they came up with the “Woody” sailplanes. Taking a page from their book we are offering F1A and F1B classes this year here in Colorado being known as the Legacy class. (Woody seemed to indicate that carbon was banned)
Here are the details:
* F1A(L) Any model without bunting. All other current FAI rules apply. The class is eligible for America’s cup points as the models conform to the current FAI rules.
* F1B(L) Any model conforming to the 40 gram rules and with out delayed prop start. These models are not eligible for America’s cup points as they don’t conform to the current FAI rules.
*F1C(V) The current vantage F1C rules will apply.
We will be flying this class all summer and a perfect 14 round score will earn the competitor a MMM Blue jacket and a silver cup if they post the highest score in the 14 rounds
If you enjoyed flying FAI in the past now you can dust off those old models and come out and play under the Colorado sky with us.
Thermals,
Jerry Murphy
9 Via Escondido Valle
Manitou Springs, CO 80829
Editor’s Comment: One question Jerry, do you permit an instant start in your F1B(L) event ? Experience with Juniors , Beginners and what we refer to in the Ike as “ Grand Masters”, i.e those over 75 an instant start helps these people get a clean launch. A delayed start may be intimidating to the amateur sportsman and does have an additional opportunity to mess up while an instant start makes it a more enjoyable experience. The other comment is current rubber is way better than anything from back in the 40 gram era so you could so the same with F1B as you did with F1A and do it so they could get America’s Cup points. Clearly F1C is a different matter.
Looking for a Moose
Online results from Moose Cup you will find here:
http://www.norbergsfk.se/Alltomklubben/Arbetsrum/SwedishMooseCup/