Preliminary Flight #2

Spent the morning reading the other blogs as it's always great to have a different perspective.  Here we go again.... Today our flight times are as follows:

Day 2 - Monday
Site #2 Chad at 08:39
Site #1 Michi at 10:59
Site #2 Dave at 11:40
Site #2 Ethan at 18:06

We all headed to site #2 to watch Chad's second P-15 flight. He was second up after Akiba from Japan and had another solid round. They benefited by the low cloud that obscured the sun. He scored a 435.33 and was pretty happy with most of the flight.

Chad gets ready.

Kelly and I stayed around the #2 site as I flew just after Michi who was on the other flight line. My ability to see him fly was limited by the timing of our draw. We will work on Hartley for a better draw time :-) The rest of the team all went down to see him fly. Michi had a solid round again and was rewarded with a 424.33 from his judging panel. It's important to keep building each and every time we fly. He is up to the challenge!

I was up next and although I had changed out my rudder servo, I was not 100% confident in the plane. With an unplanned servo failure yesterday I found it hard to place full trust in the plane. There was only one way to find out!

I flew my round with good speed control but a weak stall turn at the end of the box ended any chance of a comeback. A few other areas come to mind but it's late and I don't want to bore you. I ended up with a 356.33 score today on site #1

We now had a break until Ethan flew so we headed to Hinwil and started practicing. Will's wife Stephanie arrived in from Red Deer, Alberta and joined in the fun of watching grown men struggle to fly straight lines and radius's :-)

Ethan and Colin hard at practice.

Hinwil practice field

We worked on positioning and refinement of the P-15 sequence. Everyone took a turn and soon we had to head back to the main site for Ethan's second Preliminary flight. Slight blow out conditions prevailed but the plane easily managed the wind. Ethan had a "cracker" of a round and scored a 427.33! He was very happy and so was the team.

We headed over to site #1and some of us had a bite to eat before returning to our hotel. A small social was held on the hotel's patio and we discussed the day's events.

Day 3 of preliminary flights go Tuesday
Site #1 - Ethan at 11:31
Site #2 - Michi at 15:20
Site #1 - Dave at 16:05
Site #1 - Chad at 17:49

Awaiting Joseph's scores... it drew a big crowd!

The scoring system has worked very well with scores posted within seconds of the elements flown. Also the main scoreboard is also updated as soon as the pilot completes the round. Technology is making the results available to all before the pilot gets the plane back to the pit!

I have added some additional pictures to the Team's Album although I am behind on captions. Sorry.