Paul L.
It turned out to be a really nice day though more than a little breezy at times.
There was sunshine and there was lift.
Rich finished the day with a 12min plus flight and over 900ft of altitude.
I launched my plane 3 times before the contest and on the third and hardest launch something snapped. I then also noticed that I had no elevator control. The plane pitched up and down and I pulled full flaps and fortunately landed with no further damage. The vertical stab had buckled. From that point I became the designated photographer. The v. stab in no way affected the elevator, the elevator servo does seem sketchy though so it will be replaced before flying again.
I any case, it was a pretty nice day and I enjoyed taking photos and watching the flying. Here’s a few.–
Paul Luebke
Wayne W.
Hi fliers,
It turned out to be an exciting day of HL flying that I wasn’t too confident would happen. Forecast was for cloudy, 5-10 with gusts to 15 out of the west, and not a lot of thermal activity. It actually turned out to be all of those things, except the last part. Lift was everywhere, you just had to sniff right to catch it.
We had five guys signed up, but Kevin was not able to make it. As Paul reported, he had a vertical stab failure just before we were going to start, and had to sit it out. He could have made a field repair, but it might have been ugly. I agree that taking it home and doing it right was the way to go.
The lift was light, and you had to be on your toes to recognize it. For me, if I came off launch and saw that I was not sinking, that was the clue to circle and see where it took you. It wasn’t booming by any means but 2s and 3s were quite doable. One thing to watch though, was how far to ride it downwind and still be able to get back. Both Joe and Rich had 3:00 rides that counted for naught as they just didn’t make it home. (missed it by ‘that’ much)
We flew six rounds. By that time we were out of gas and bones were cold. After putting things away, Rich threw a couple more times and caught a spectacular ride up to 1000.’ Let me tell you, a 1.5M dlg looks pretty small at that altitude.
Here are the round scores. I let you look through them and posit what was going on:
And here is how it all added up at the end of the day. Since we flew for more than 5 rounds, there was a drop:
Sure would like to see more HL fliers out next year. If it would bring out more guys, I’d like to see it flown as 1.5M mixed launch. Lots of other clubs are doing it and it is very popular as long as launches are even. And that is not too difficult to work out.
See you next week for TD.
Cheers,
Wayne
Joe P
Today was just my 2nd HL contest this year. I’m glad that I made it out as it turned out to be a fun day. It took me several rounds to figure out that I wasn’t releasing my launch switch soon enough. I believe that was causing me to loose altitude when leveling off the top. Most of my flights were less than a minute, but on my last flight I found booming lift that I was able to ride up several hundred feet. That turned out to be a 2:58 minute flight, but unfortunately I landed outside of the box for a goose egg.
As Wayne mentioned, Rich put on a show after the contest soaring to near the limit of sight with a with a 12+ minute flight.
Enjoyed the day!
Joe
