SEN 3176
- The FAI Arizona Southwest Regionals at Eloy
- Fab Feb Update
- About Timing
- NFFS Sympo
- National Cup – Recalibration, Incentives and Penalties
The FAI Arizona Southwest Regionals at Eloy
From: Peter Brocks
In 4 weeks the first America’s Cup and National Cup contest of 2024 will again be the Southwest Regionals on January 13-15. For more info on the SWR, all the events flown and how to get to the field please visit https://swregionals.org/
Please pre-enter for the FAI SWR by filling out the FAI Entry Form at https://swregionals.org/ and mailing it to me with a copy of your AMA card and your check before Jan. 1 to save $5. If you are also entering AMA/NFFS events you also can include your AMA Entry Form and pay with one check. The max. fee to fly any FAI/AMA/NFFS event is $50. If you cannot make it, I’ll return your entry fee.
We are very much looking forward to flying with you in Eloy,
Peter
Fab Feb Update
So far we have over 60 pre-entrants in the FAI Classes The online pre-entry link for FAI Events is at https://forms.gle/imvxr7Xj6AL8Lc1x9 This is for all the FAI events. World Cup, including F1E and the Mini Events. But not needed for AMA events in the Ike. You should pre-sign up for the FAI Events but you do not pay until you get to Lost Hills. Lots of extra information at https://sen.faifreeflight.org/
About Timing
As part of the Fab Feb we are doing the About Time project. This is an optional activity to time your World Cup flight with an additional automatic timing with an on board flight recorder. Details are explained in a previous SEN and will be updated shortly. Initially we started this Mini-Neuron as the onboard flight recorder and Flying Neurons have made some updates to the firmware to make it easier. Recently we had a meeting with Flying Neurons and the other certified altimeter supplier All-Tee. All-Tee are also interested in participating so we expect an update on that soon.
During the meeting we discussed the technique for calculating the flight time. The depends on how the start and end of flight is detected. Both All-Tee and Flying Neurons use very similar techniques. The start of flight is detected by an increase in altitude. Over 55 meters in the case of a F1A model and over 5 in the case for F1BCand Q. In both cases there is an adjustment made after the flight has been deemed to have started to compensate for the time taken to reach altitude change. The end of flight is detected by a lack of altitude change for an extended period such as 10 seconds. And as with the start detection or rather opposite to the start detection, 10 seconds is deducted from flight time. We were shown flight graphs from which it was very obvious that transition from gliding in dead air where the rate of descent is very low it is still very obvious when the flight stops. One of the objectives of the About Time project is to validate these processes independently in contest conditions.
This was followed by a discussion around a number of error conditions such as a person on a motor bike catching a model while it was still in the air and riding around with it, it appears that someone has tried this one. There are possible other techniques for detecting the start and end of flight with other sensors etc. What was interesting is that there are certainly a number of theoretical cases but nobody knows how likely they are and what is needed to detect them. But both the Neuron and the All-Tee are flight recorders and the graph of the time against altitude is kept and can be viewed. During our About Time test the recording device will determine the flight time and show it. But in the case of an anomaly we are able to view the flight record graph to see what happened and do an expert human analysis. It may well be that bizarre anomalous conditions are so rare that the solution is to do a human e.g. jury analysis of the flight record. That’s why we are doing About Time and this king of leads to the next article,…..
P.S. this counts as transparency for those living beyond the edge, even if no chickens were involved.
NFFS Sympo
Normally about this of before this time we publish an article SEN from the NFFS announcing the editor of the next NFFS Symposium, and we have not done that yet. That’s because the editor had not been chosen
The editor of the 2024 Sympo is : Roger Morrell, that me
I am very honored to have been asked.
The way to get in touch with me is with by regular email r_morrell@yahoo.com.
We are of course looking for articles. NFFS leadership have suggested that articles that people would like to use as reference articles going forward would be most welcome. There will be more on the next Sympo in NFFS publications.
The NFFS has a history of doing article with serious scientific analysis and figuring why stuff happens, so going back to the About Timing article just above this one, maybe some F1ABCor Q guys would like to accurately traditionally time some of their test session both by hand and ‘automatically’ with a Neuron or All-Tee to evaluate to accuracy of the different ways of timing.
National Cup – Recalibration, Incentives and Penalties
By Aram Schlosberg
The National Cup (NCup) has a straightforward scoring system. The base score is 20 points. A single flyer gets one point if they make three official flights in 6 attempts according to the AMA rules. (An attempt is under 20 seconds.) The 4th and subsequent flights are called flyoffs with no second attempt. The five top flyers each get a point to every flyer they beat – so the winner in a field of 5+ flyers gets 26 points, the second place 25 points and so on. Reporting is simple – the top 5 flyers by rank and the total number of entries. In fact, over 90% of the NCup contests have a single flyer.
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The following are 3 related scoring suggestions.
1/ Reduce the NCup base score to 9. So, a solo flyer that makes 3 official flights would get 10 points. And if there are five flyers, the winner would get 15 points and so on.
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2/ Deduct 3 points from a flyer that does not max out the first 3 official flights. (In other words, can’t fly a flyoff flight.) This requires reporting the number of consecutive maxes of each of the top 5 flyers. Suppose there are two flyers, and that the second place dropped an official flight. The winner would get 11 points (9+2) given 3 consecutive maxes or (11|3). The second place gets 7 (9+1-3) points with let’s say 2 consecutive maxes, or (7|2).
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3/ Award 3 bonus points to flyers with at least 5 consecutive maxes. So, a solo flyer who made 5 consecutive maxes will get 13 points (9+1+3), noted as (13|5). And if there are 5 flyers, two of which made 5 consecutive maxes, two made flyoff flights and the last one was not clean, their scores in decreasing order would be: (17=9+5+3|5), (16=9+4+3|5), (12=9+3|4), (11=9+2|3) and (7=9+1-3|2).
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In the case of the five flyers, under the current NCup scoring system the winner would get (20+5) points, and the fifth place (20+1) points, or 84% of the winner’s score. With the proposed three changes, the last example of 5 flyers, the winner would get 17 points, the 5th place that dropped an official flight 7 points, or 41% of the winning score in that contest. This approach rewards excellence and penalizes weak performance among the top 5 flyers.
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As an aside, in small fields or windy conditions, the max could be dropped to 90 seconds provided it’s noted in the report. ///
Editor’s Comment: SEN’s emphasis is on the FAI Classes and that’s true of most of our readers. But of course they fly the AMA events as well and we support all kinds of Free Flight so we do include Free Flight articles of general interest.