SEN 2665
- Arizona FF Championships
- Don’t Discourage people
- 20 seconds of History
- Chill be happy
- Some (not discouraging) lateral thinking
Arizona FF Championships
From: Peter Brocks
Next weekend, Dec. 7 and 8, the Arizona FAI Free Flight Championships will be held in Eloy, AZ. This is the last America’s Cup contest to collect points for the year 2019. There are also AMA, NFFS and SAM events. On the desert flying field in Eloy it will be cool in the mornings but it should warm up to about 70° during the day. The flyers (FAI and AMA) can be downloaded from the NFFS Contest Calendar website – https://freeflight.org/competition/master-calendar/
For information on the 3-day 2020 Southwest Regional Model Airplane Championships on January 18-20 go to the SWR website https://swregionals.org/ – please use the Entry Forms there to pre-enter before Jan. 1, 2020.
Hope to see you in Eloy,
Peter Brocks
Don’t Discourage people
From: Stepan Stefanchuk
Hello Roger,
About the attempt rule.
I don’t understand why people are so cruel? Why again they started talking about the abolition of the rule: a flight of 20 seconds.
We have aircraft modeling, we have many classes of models. And in every class the pilot has the right to make a mistake. And this error does not affect the final result! It is discarded. Why do we want to be cruel for F1? Every year, F1 pilots are getting older and fewer. These people spend a lot of money and time traveling to competitions. And here is one wrong move and all is in vain! This is unfair! Sometimes observing such a failure from a pilot who is more than 70 years old, I think that the worst flight should be discarded. And in order to have fewer people in the fly-offs, it is necessary to gradually make changes to the models. First, increase the weight of the F1B model by 20 grams.
It is possible to do so that a attempt was not possible every round. But once during the competition. The fly-off is separate.
Sorry for my English. This is a computer translator.
Stepan Stefanchuk.
20 seconds of History
From: john carter
Guys ,
the 20 sec rule dates back to ROG days, yep I would be in favour of removing an attempt on the 20secs .But it will not reduce fly offs numbers . Its the fact we fly most of contest in places like Lost Hills in calm wind and when lots of lift about . I think we need at Champs to drop the w cups either side and take more time to cover required flights using more early and late in the day conditions.
Also reduce fly off slot to 5 mins working time with a set max at 7minutes but deduct the towing time from score that would be interesting .
John Carter
Chill be happy
From: Ross Jahnke
Rule change proposals seem to always follow the WC. Second only to politics
on Facebook, it’s my least favorite topic on social media.
As our models have become extremely reliable and precise, we have become
less tolerant of the aspects of the sport that we cannot control, that we
never could control. How did we survive the days of fuses and Tatone
timers, no trackers, no electronics, no RDT? Why did we persevere after
losing an F1 airplane knowing we had to actually build its replacement from
scratch? How did we once hold major contests at Bong where walking a line
in waist high grass was an art form? If our younger selves saw us fly a van
Wallene F1A, Stefanchuk F1B, or Babenko F1C they would wonder why the hell
we aren’t blissfully happy. Three minutes was not a shorter amount of time
in those days was it?
Some (not discouraging) lateral thinking
From: Allard van Wallene
On performance:
Performance increase in the F1B and F1C class have been tackled by the most obvious, reduced rubber weight and engine run time. It is all about energy, easy to implement, model designs didn’t become obsolete.
Less energy directly translates in less altitude and hence less overall performance.
F1A has been left untouched for decades. The main reason was and still is, that the only way to reduce performance is to reduce tow line length or change the model design. None of these were very popular for obvious reasons. A shorter towline makes circle towing in wind a risky exercise and for the novice next to impossible. A change in design would make all F1A’s obsolete overnight.
So if we follow the F1B and F1C changes, how can we reduce energy input? There is a rather simple remedy here. Make the 2.5 dm2 pennant of a non-porous material (e.g. Icarex). The increase in drag is noticeable and will reduce the energy input (speed) in the model. Less speed = less altitude. Same as in recent F1B and C rule changes. And if the performance gets out of control in the future, the pennant can be increased in size (3.0, 3.5, 4 dm2 etc). It gives full control over the performance of F1A’s. It would even be possible to use it solely for fly offs. This has been field tested and proven to be extremely effective. A 4 dm2 non-porous pennant would cut altitude gain by 5-10 meters for a regular model, 10-20 meters for an LDA and 20 -30 meters for an LDA flapper (the higher the speed of the model, the higher the speed reduction caused by the pennant’s drag).
Another option would be to prohibit the falling down at launch (make it an attempt). It would cut 5-10 meters from the launch and would make the game lots safer. I have heard of a junior flyer who tried to copy this technique in a recent fly off and almost knocked herself unconscious. And this was on a grass field. Imagine hitting your head on a stone. Is this what we want?
regards
Allard