SEN 2410
- MaxMen FlyOff Plot
- F1S Observations
- TH-6a gone – Baofeng in ?
MaxMen FlyOff Plot (graphical, not conspiracy theory)
From:gilbert morris
Hi Roger,
Attached is a plot of Place vs Flight Time of the larger MaxMen flyoffs. I hope you can link to it on SEN. If you study it you can see where close placing flights were likely flying in the same air, likely inversion air.
The first flyoff flights of F1A (plot A!) from 12th to 15th place and from 16th to 31st place were closely spaced and likely in very slowly deteriorating air. Flights 6 and 7 of A2 and 2 & 3 of A3 were likely in the same air as well as 1, 2 & 3 of B2 (B2 being the second flyoff of F1B). I didn’t try to plot the F1C’s because the were relatively small and would have cluttered the graph. The lesson to be learned, I think, is if you pick inversion air you can significantly influence your flight time.
Editor’s comment:
The F1A flyoffs 1 and 2 were in the evening with gradually decaying good air. Typical evening conditions.
The third F1A flyoff was in the morning with unusual condition. There was a wind shear layer at what I belive was somewhere between line height and top of bunt height. The winner’s airplane handled this better than anyone else.
The F1B fly off was in the evening on a different day but with similar conditions, that of gradually decaying air. I’m not sure what way second and third place went but I know th winder drifted to the south while most others including the 4th place getter went more to the west.
F1S Observations
There has been a recent storm in a tea cup on FB over F1S/E-36 performance. With over 170 comments maybe it is bigger than a tea cup. With people citing their own instrumented (test) flight and theoretical calculations as to reasons why the performance is too great and the rules should be changed and other group saying I fly in lots of events (in my country) and I am not seeing that.
Free flight has many different aspects and lots of different factors contribute to success. We have amongst us scientists from Nobel Laureates (no he does not fly F1S) down, very practical people, tough sportsmen, beautiful builders etc . All contribute, but sometimes we forget that Free Flight is a competition for FLYING model airplanes in competition with all that entails. The weather of the day with it’s thermals and downers, it turbulence and calm , it’s wind shears and regular flow don’t know that the calculations say the model should climb to 150 meters or that Brian Eggleston says the sink speed of the airfoil is .2878 meters a second. How strong was that rubber band you held the stab on with, did the battery for the E-36 reach it’s full charge, how much was the sportsman hurrying to get the flight in before the end of the round, was there a tiny crack in the wing so it flexed just a bit more, did the “best” guy Stan not fly today because he decided to help his buddy, …?. Many things go to contribute who wins on the day.
There is no doubt that the E-36/F1S is a simple airplane and some versions people get to fly quite well and easily but to get an exceptional performance is very hard and takes a lot of hard work. This is the same in all classes. Because of the World Champs and World Cup with F1A, B, C, P and Q we get to see more quickly how different people from different parts of the world compare. With the Mini events, in particular F1S not so many people have travelled widely so we don’t see so much of that.
Looking at the Fab Feb in particular there are two items of interest. First the exceptional performance over the Ike/Kiwi weekend by Ralph Ray in getting some phenomenal number of Maxes over several E-36 and F1S contests held on the Ike/Kiwi weekend. In the F1S event he was the only person to make the first flight MAX of 5 minutes and he used a 5 second motor run. This is just not possible without a little thermal help and no doubt that Stan Buddenbohm was at his side when launched contributed to him finding that nice piece of air. NO other F1S model made 5 minutes and they were using 10 second motor runs. BUT several airplanes from the other 3 mini classes F1H, F1G and F1J all made the 5 minutes… hmmm ?
Finally the person who won the Top Dude award for the best F1S performance over the Fab Feb was not a Nobel Laureate , not a professional sportsman, did not have expert help, just a regular dude who likes flying model airplanes and went out and flew in all F1S events, Derek McGuckin.
TH-6a gone – Baofeng in ?
From: hot wired
The popular Kenwood TH-6A handheld radio that has many options and excellent reception on a wide range of frequencies so has been used for tracker reception has been discontinued and replaced by a superior, more expensive model with more features that are not needed for our purposes. This is probably a tipping point in purchasing decisions. What to get now ?
We have noticed the popular Chinese Baofeng handhelds that are about 10% of the cost of a Kenwood with probably about 955 of the capability for our purposes. There is some confusion because there are at least 3 models: UV-5R, UV-8R and UV-82 all seem to work and the differences seem unimportant. But it is not really clear what these differences are and do they matter anyone know ?
And another plus is that they come in bright colors !
Yes I know the in thing is to have a GPS but radio beacon are not completely passe, are in popular use and also used in a redundant system.