SCAT Electronic News 28 July 1998

SCAT Electronic News 28 July 1998


Table of Contents
=================

Timekeeping and more - Anselmo Zeri
Antonov Cup'98 - Victor Stamov
Lost Subscribers
In the Press - Champion's attitude.
SCAT Composites Seminar
Correspondence


Timekeeping and more
--------------------
Dear Roger,
it's interesting and fascinating to have the ideas, opinions and advices of
so many free flight friends brought to you every few days, it helps to keep
thinking.
Quite recently Richard Blackam and Ivan Horejsi came back to the suggestion
that the problems are linked to the 2 minutes increments in the actual fly
off scheme.
This is not completely new, it has been written, said and whispered in many
occasions before, there has been even a proposal (I think from Russia or
Ukraina) a few years ago in that direction.

Actually I can agree with that proposal, because it wasn't a "stand alone"
proposal, but It was coupled together with a complement: a reduction in
performances of the models.
For F1C we complay now with the suggestion of that "old" proposal, for F1A
the problem is not so dramatic, for F1B.....(I already ear the most enlighte-
ned starting screaming and crying in the usual plea) we are not yet in the
lines of that proposal.
A fly off with the actual models and 1 minute increments is doomed to last
quite long, after 3 fly off rounds it will be at 7 minutes, still quite easy
to pass (I supposed we started at 5 minutes max).
Only the 4th round could, may be, bring a decision, but do we really enjoy
flying 4 more rounds after the first seven? If somebody think that in any
case the time at that point will be late enough to "shorten" the very long
flights, well, even the actual scheme, if you start the fly off late enough,
will bring you the 7 minutes round as late as you want.

The problem is that, when the word "performance" of the models (but in this
case is not "the models", it's F1B, just to be clear) is pronounced many
emotional feelings come to the surface.
We have seen the same with F1C: the noise has been incredible, the predictions
of death for the class and denaturation of the class and of the contest were
loud, but the situation is now a fact: many F1C flyers told me that "it's not
so bad", even many like it, and personally I like it a lot: now the performance
of the models and the max are comparable to each other and the contest is
now a real contest, not anymore a pure pro-forma to funnel almost everybody
in the fly off.

Next F1B, without high flying projects of total renovation of the class, not
because owners of bought models would see their jewels suddenly obsolete (per-
sonally I would find this very funny), but because the real builders of their
models would see the entire result of their work made useless, and this must
be avoided at any price.
This bring us to the point that somebody find so painful: the weight of the
motor.
I don't make here any comment or proposal on the subject, but I don't think
that many years will pass before we shall discuss this a bit more...

Anselmo Zeri

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Antonov Cup'98
==============


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Hi Roger,
This weekend we had Antonov Cup. There were not so many fliers, like before,
only ukranians, some russians and one F1B flier 75 years old from Germany
Wilhelm DESINGER. This year we miss our permanent competitor Peter ALLNUT.

Contest was very well organized again by ANTONOV Company.
Saturday F1B (20 fliers, 3 in fly off) and C (16 fliers, 2 in fly off),
wind 0-3 m/s, temp. around 30 C. VE drop 4 sec. in second round, but finished
3rd. First place in fly off against son of Victor ONUFRIENKO (F1C and many
times World Champion in F2C in past, one of organizers of Antonov Cup) also
Victor took Artem BABENKO. He is a new guy (35 years old) in our team was
2nd in team at Euro Champ and 3rd at Von Hafe Cup in Portugal this year.
After this victopy he has a good chance to be on the top of World Cup '98.

Oleg KULAKOVSKY (F1B) after victory at Puszta Cup in Hungary and Von Hafe Cup
in Portugal with big numbers of competitors have got good bonus points.
This rule works from 1998 (for every 20 beaten in F1A, 10 in F1B and 5 in F1C
add 1 point to the points for place). In case of winning Antonov Cup
KULAKOVSKY can be a leader of World Cup, but in forth round his model made
a loop during motor climb and miss 5 seconds. He must test a luck next contests
in Germany and Belgium. Winner Alexey BUKIN against Yury BLAZHEVICH and
Alexandr STAROV.

Sunday also good weather for F1A, more wind 3-5 m/s. 4 from 33 in F1A in
fly off. Winner - Vladislav LAZAREVICH (276 sec), Victor BESARAB (198 sec),
Victor STAMOV (190 sec).

Victor STAMOV

{more results next issue}

Lost Subscribers
----------------

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In the Press
------------

I just got my most recent Aeromodeller and there was a whole series
of letters from Free Flighters of note mainly about BOM [Builder of the
Model] rule in the UK.

I will refrain on commenming on what is a UK internal matter -
partly because I object when sportsmen from other countries
comment on how we do things here in the US, in particular select out World
Champs teams .. but I was very interested by a letter from Andy Crisp.

Andy has the attitude of a Champion - He said [in my words] I do not
mind what the rules are - BOM or not - I'm going to build
my own planes the best I can and try the hardest to beat
the lot of you. And what's more I've built up a lot of experience
over the years and that counts a lot. Just the other day I was talking
to Bob White about some of this Avionics stuff, Bob's attitude was the
same , with a little regret. He didn't care if we had Avionics or not,
he knows he can a build and fly a plane that will be there with the best of
them. His regret was that he finds the 7 round contest , with flyoff 7
too tiring. However as those taking part in the Coupe d'Hiver
category of the America's Cup know Bob still has his Champion's attitude.


SCAT Composites Seminar
-----------------------

This is not a full report - but rather a 'wish you were there post card'.
The school was a sucess. Our members who wanted to learn something
did - some people showed up who we had never seen before. One
person in particular had been a Junior Team member [F1A] in '90
and just finished University and wanted to get up to speed
with the latest. There were also a number of older flyers who are
still young at heart and want to learn more.

Thanks to speakers Matt Gewain, Alexander Andruikov, Bob Piserchio,
Al Ulm, Doug Joyce and Dimitri Kozluk and to Norm Furutani who organized
the location. F1A flyer Kate Joyce did the organizing and SCAT Scribe
Tom Laird the video tape. We've look at some of the tapes and
they look good. We will edit them and let people know when they will
be available.

We need to plan what we will do next. This year we organized
the Electronic Timer Seminar at the Max Men 14 Rounder and this
event in the summer. When is the best time or place ?
What other subjects should we talk about ?

We want to do something at big contest, probably the Max Men and
have already talked to John Clapp about a FAI Rubber presentation.
John gave an excellent presentation in Omarama, New Zealand
during the World cup contests.

Correspondence
--------------

Dear Editor,

I wonder if it would be possible to change the SCAT mailing system so as to
suppress the list of recipients? I seem to remember that it used to work
that way.

The reason I'm suggesting this is that some of us outside the US are charged
for phone connect time; the latest SCAT news contained just 10K of text but
had a file size of 60K. As the readership grows this ratio can only get
worse.

I'm personally not so concerned with the cost of the call but I read mail
during weekends via MS Mail remote and its infantile idea of a 'transfer
protocol' is almost bound to glitch and abort at least once for any transfer
of more than 40K.

Regards,
Martin

[Editorial Comment]

Actually, Martin we were 'supposed' to be doing it that way and
have checking on what was happening and hopefully 'fixed it'.


............................................................

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............................................................
Roger Morrell