National Free Flight Society

SEN 2650

  1. Malcolm’s Photo’s
  2. The Spread Sheet Links
  3. Fairness  – you don’t understand

Malcolm’s Photo’s
From: Malcolm Campbell

Hi Roger
Brian’s photos were superb.  It  was a hard act to follow but here is my effort – 556 photos and two videos and yes, one is the Hokey Pokey;  I cannot get that song and its delivery out of my mind!

Photos from the Sierra Cup and the Kotuku Cup will soon be following.

 Malcolm’s Photos

Cheers

The Spread Sheet Links
The results displayed fo the World Champs were in the format of a published google sheet, this is a bit like a PDF in that it can be difficult to work with or re-publish the data.. Below are links to the  where you can download to Excel , and other formats that make it easier to work with the data.

The World events

Challenge France
 
F1A World Champs Team

F1B World Champs Team

F1C World Champs Team

Fairness  – you don’t understand
From: Tom Vaccaro

Roger, Mike, Bill and Bernard,

I think all of you are missing my point. The impetus for me to write initially was Rogers description of the fly off rounds of the Sierra Cup in which he described the flying conditions as containing “spectacular climbs and drops”.

Would any of you argue that these are the right conditions in which to fly extended max fly fly offs?

My point was that under these conditions the element of luck plays a huge role in the result, which is not fair to the people who have actually done the work to excel. No amount of practice has much bearing on who survives in these conditions.

While I accept luck as part of the game, I believe that every effort must be made to minimize it. If severe thermal conditions exist, such as Roger described, fly offs should be delayed until late in the day or early morning. I never suggested an extended first round max as Bill commented. I don’t think that would address the problem.

Mike makes the point about early morning inversion layers and thermals of some sort always being present. I agree. Taking Lost Hill early morning conditions as an example, these conditions are pretty uniform and available to everyone. A level playing field. I could always count on 6:45 plus or minus a few seconds from my models if I selected a good motor and did my part in winding and launching at early LH fly offs. If it wasn’t for a guy named Alex I would have had a lot more success but unfortunately he’s a better flyer than me, not a luckier flyer.

Editor’s reply for Roger, Mike, Bill and Bernard  (apologies for speaking for y’all)

Tom, I believe we understand your point , we just don’t agree.

Because –
1. This is not the object of the event. ( to have a flyoff that favors model performance over all other criteria)
2. Making every World Champs/World Cup go to a next morning FO is just not practical, it could go to several mornings.
3. The morning can have “unfair” conditions too.
4. What’s fair?
5. The CD cannot (always) determine before the FO starts if the conditions are “fair” or not.  When the infamous FO was flown at Lost Hills, it was in the early evening, calm and no obvious evidence of thermal activity.
6. Redoing the FO because the conditions were not “fair” means? – if the star sportsman or sportsmen did not make it is not fair?
7. The rules already have rules governing “fairness” – wind speed, visibility, safety  (and local – for example at Lost Hills we have an agreement with the Orchard owner that we won’t deliberately send a whole bunch of airplanes into the orchard)

We’ve probably beaten this dead horse enough so lets move on.