Preliminary Flight #1

Today is our first official day of competition. Teams are flying on two separate flight lines with a morning and afternoon session. With four judging panels all scoring separately it's basically a guessing game as to how things will turn out this early. Some panels can be harder than others so even though we may see "leaders" at this point it is really not representative of how things will play out. After the third round things will start to take shape and some "assumptions" can be made but until the final Preliminary rounds is flown it's a free for all.

Our team has four flyers as we have a Junior member in Ethan. This allows these younger flyers the opportunity to gain valuable experience and hopefully take on a full member position as they grow older. Ethan was first up this morning at 9:06. With the sun right in the box and the judges pretty much blinded, Ethan put in a pretty solid round of flying. A few small slips here and there but pretty consistent. He felt good about it but only received a 353.67 score.

Ethan readies his plane. (Well his dad does :-)

Ethan and Colin after round one.

We watched a few of the other notable flyers such as Jason Shulman of the USA. Jason was flying his new Epic Biplane and it was an eye catcher for shear size. A deep fuse that you could hold a small gathering in and huge tail surfaces. It flew well and presented nicely from my observations.

Jason about to make an epic flight!

Some woman was in my car!

Galactika

Brett Wickizer's ride. Great paint scheme.

A couple of fellow Canadians from Colin & Ethan's RC club in Ontario arrived and we said hello to James Kidston from Guelph (Ivan's home town) and Eric Wenger from Acton. We welcomed their support and look forward to seeing them back over the course of the event. We dragged then to Hinwil for some practice flights before our afternoon session.

Practice flights completed it was back to flying site #2 to watch Chad put in his first round of this competition at 15:19. We watched his flight progress and could see the scores being tabulated as he went. A good solid flight with some minor errors evident but he posted a 435.33 score.

Next up was Michi but due to the closeness of the flight times I could not make it over to see him fly. Luckily I have my spies (my entire team) and they reported a good flight as well! Congratulations Akimoto San with a 406 score.

The weather was clouding over and it looked like rain was on it's way so I decided to get the planes assembled early and stored in one of the tents near by. This was completed and then the skies opened up! I spent the time making a rain cover for my radio and it looked like it would work great.

The judges decided to take a break in hopes that the rains would abate but they returned to only slightly less rain than earlier.

Rain storm... judging hold.

The Ronco TX cover!

Kevin Caton of the British Team was kind enough to offer up his big tarp and we used it to keep the planes dry during the voltage check. It was now or never and Kelly took my plane out while Will called and held the umbrella over my head. I had never flown in this kind of weather but the flight actually progress very well... good tempo... good center stall turn.... feeling in the groove. Then across the top of my Hourglass maneuver the rudder stopped working. Arghhh!

I stopped the flight and landed with the rudder dead. My teammates help get the plane back to the covered area and we spend some time diagnosing the problem. I use an S-Bus setup and the elevators worked fine off the 1000mm hub. Changed the rudder servo out and will test fly it in the morning. Having never had a servo fail on me before I find it ironic that on this very flight one decides to take a vacation! Arghhh!

Our Team and Kevin Caton were the last to leave the field tonight after some Futaba surgery.  Oh well tomorrow is another opportunity and I look forward to the challenge.

Special thanks to all those that offered replacements parts... and to Chad who did :-)

Score link added to right side of the page... select Preliminary & click on the score number to view each judges score.... no secrets anymore:-)