SEN 1532
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World Champs Update
Wow
What a great end to wonderful World Championship... As the sun sets, the greatest F1C flyer ever circles the flight line to glide into a 4 second victory over yet another challenger. Verbitsky wins F1C.
The weather was great for F1C day, that is unless you were trying to pick the air. It had the least wind and shortest chases of the 3 events and challenging thermal conditions. These conditions meant that the launches had to be spot on and with great thermal picking. Kudos to the Ukrainian team to get all their men in the fly off. 12 made the flyoff and 7 through to the 7 minute.
1 VERBYTSKYY Yevhen UKR 240 180 180 180 180 180 180 1320 300 390
2 JIONGYU Zou CHN 240 180 180 180 180 180 180 1320 300 386
3 ALEKSANDROV V. UKR 240 180 180 180 180 180 180 1320 300 364
F1A Scuttlebutt
We heard that in the F1A fly off Titov did 98m on the launch while Kogot did 93m. This compare with the 106 m that Roland got at the Feb contests at Lost Hills. There was more wind at Lost Hills , slightly lower altitude and cooler conditions, what ever all that is worth.
The main thing is that the LDA worked well at another event. This is very encouraging for F1A as I means the complexity and cost of a flapper is not needed to win at this level.
Perfect timing in all 3 events
On all the flyoffs they finished in light so the time keepers could see and as the organizer read out the results the sun was sinking over the horizon.
Perspective
During every event there will be comments made about the organizers and about other flyers too It is very important to put these comments in perspective.
As sportsmen we try very hard to improve our performance and often go to extra ordinary events just to gain a few seconds advantage. I have watched Alex Andriukov's effort to prepare for the USA Team Selection Contest and the World Champs after wards, he spent hours on the field, in the workshop and travelling between. He developed a new Thermal detection system. Roland Koglot is said to have made over over 3000 flight in the past year. My team mate Paul Lagan logged over 80- F1B flights between leaving Lost Hills in February and coming over to Argentina in April. I've seen first hand the work that Igor Vivchar does in the preparation of his models.
Why does this matter ? Look at the F1C event, Verbitsky won by just 4 seconds! How many hours of prep gave him that. Maybe in Evgeny's case it how many years :-) In a previous SEN I remarked that the Brits beat the Aussies by 1 second in the F1A team score. How many more test flights should have Paul Lagan made to get that extra 3 seconds in the F1B flyoff to beat Igor Vivchar?
At an event like the world champs the team manager's job is to facilitate things so that that prep work goes in the right direction and the biggest contribution is marshaling the resources to retrieve the models. The larger the team the more difficult the task.
During the contest the sportsman and manager have an expectation that the contest organization , no matter which World Champs will work at the same level. Maybe this expectation is not reasonable ?They will put pressure on the organizer to try and achieve this. They will complain about the smallest detail and that happens at any event of this size.
In the previous SEN I reported on a conversation that I had with Blake Jensen the USA team manager. Some people may have taken this as a serious criticism of this particular event. That was not intended to be the case. Our first reference was the US Team selection event, where, for example last October the organizer made an error in the number of poles the sportsman moved each round that meant the sportsmen did not fly from all sections of the line, giving a potential advantage to some participants. One word to Tiffaney, she says that when Blake's on the team she has to deal with one prima donna and when he is the team manager she has to deal with 9 prima donnas. So Tiff, if he ever CDs a World Champs you will have deal with 300 prima donnas..
What's important is to look back after the event is over and judge how it all went. We had 3 days of great competition, excellent weather, no bad chases or bad results because of the choice of flight line. Each event finished on the day with two rounds of fly off showing the best models ...
Personal Commentaries
Lagan on F1A
It is 6pm on glider day and I have just got back to the hotel - the 5 min and 7 min fly-offs are still on out at the field and, no, neither Chris nor I featured! There are around 20 in the fly-off on what was a difficult day. R1 started with a bit of a breeze and most of those who flew first got away for the 3 1/2 min max. Unfortunately Chriś model started its bunt while still on tow and he did a very low time. When I got to fly the wind swung 180deg on the ground but was still in the original direction about 30 metres up. I towed for half an hour (very difficult with such a wind shear) and launched with 4 mins left in the round into lumpy air for 171 secs. R2 to R3 was in strong wind (1.5km retrieves) then the rest of the day was calmer, very warm and very tricky. I was very pleased to max the rest of the day and probably ended up 30th or thereabouts (70+ flew). Chris pinged a hamstring yesterday and compounded that with an ankle twist on the other leg today. He towed up and off all day and got three nice maxes but was not a happy camper. Many names missed out, no Aussies in the flyoff but Vin Morgan missed by just one second, and no Makarov -have a look at the WC web site in a couple of hours for results.
Wakefield tomorrow - cant wait !!
PHL
Lagan on F1B
7-15pm back at the hotel. Roger misses a max in the 7th round - pity as he had been flying superbly. I maxed out and Roger picked me a really nice bit of air for the 5 min fly-off. About 21maxed out and 14 did the 5mins. Chris retrieved both fly-off flights for me. Lindy has been a supreme team manager and we have all worked very well together.
For the 7 min round it was cooling rapidly - I used an excellent motor but it was too good and the transition was not too good. Did just over 4 mins for something like 13th place I think. Only a few got over 5mins. See the www.embalse2011.com web site for results.
Weather excellent - got a bit breezy the last few rounds and it was tricky mid to late morning.
Will write more tomorrow with some general impressions.
PHL
Lagan on F1C
Power day was quite amazing. Practically dead calm from dawn to dusk. Temperature rose through the day from about 4 to 28 deg C and after about 1pm there were even some mild dust devils plus, of course, some really treacherous downdrafts at times. Very hard to pick from the ground. Chris and I did a bit of glider testing in the morning and it was really hard work towing in the doldrum-type air.
The old master won power again and it seemed to me that although the very best of the folders were getting the highest, there wan a lot to pick between various model types. Igor Vivchar was chief air-picker for the Ukrainians who all maxed out. The Australians looked good in practice and it a shame that they didn’t get to the fly-offs..
Looking back... Apart from a bit of a blow on glider day, we have been lucky to have quite exceptional weather. It has been a lot warmer in the main part of the day than expected (well over 20degC) but on the few days it has been really cold early morning (down to minus 6 decC on couple of days). Early morning air though often calm had very little buoyancy - no dew lift. The ground itself was very dry and dusty and the air seemed a lot thinner than we are used to. Embalse is at about 500metres altitude. Models that might do, say,5 minutes early at Lost Hills would do nearer 4 mins here. A lot of the time it was hard to get sensible thermistor readings - temperature builds were very short indicating small thermal patches. Notwithstanding that there were very few rounds in all three classes when there was not at least one big thermal marked by a number of models. If it was a given flyers turn to fly at such times then such lift was a free ride. A bit luck in this timing!
Overall I was very happy with my models comparative performance and with my own ability to keep on the pace. In Wakefield, like many others, I probably have the potential to take a top place but it would need everything to go just right. There are probably a dozen or so flyers though who are supreme in this event and who genuinely climb consistently to over 100metres.
Glider is a very different story. In this event most are also rans (including me). The top echelon with Low Drag Airfoil (LDA) models of flappers are significantly superior both with outright model performance and in their towing ability. LDA models hardly existed this time last year but the top 4 at this WC had them and flew them with great skill. However, to just replace a present model with an LDA will not get me, or most mere mortals, into the winners circles. In the final fly-off at this WC, Titov reached 95metres on launch. At Lost Hills in February, Koglot was consistently over 100metres. My very best with a conventional model is less that 75metres. Hmmmmm.
Will try to write some more observations on the way home.
PHL
Keville on Lagan
Just a few notes about NZ's Paul Lagan. I was a CL Stunt judge at the US Nationals, 2006-2008. One year ('07?) we endured a cold and rainy day. Having dressed for summer weather in Indiana, I was very uncomfortable. Along came Paul Lagan, who loaned me a warm, dry, comfortable jacket to wear. We had never met before that. I remember Paul as the consummate gentleman.
Mike Keville
(former FF-er)
Tucson, AZ
Words from the Leeper
Oh, Great Kiwi Master of all that is Magic,
SEN 1531 just rcvd, has fine behind-the-scenes reportage by none other
than Squatter Tom & yourself!!
Now to my queries:
YouTube videos by Tiff are mentioned. Can someone supply a link.
Can't locate it via YouTube search.
Also, did I missread or is it fact, that Mikhail Kosonozhkin did build
Titov's LDA winner , & not Yuri himself?
As much as I appreciate Roland's LDA development efforts, it is
refreshingly healthy that some parity is showing itself in short order!
So I send my congratulations to Yuri Titov, 2011 F1A world Champion!
Ciao,
Leeper
Leeper
We did not say who built Titov's airplane. We assume it was Yuri. Nick Bosdet from the UK was saying encouraging words to Mikhail Kosonoszhkin, that had nothing to do with Titov.
We will publish You Tube info when we get it.
And for Kanegawa
All,
I just want to add my thanks to Kanegawa-san for his selfless decision to fly
& hand carry the priceless, famous trophies to the Embalse World Champs
officials.
If I had my way, the FAI/CIAM, out of gratitude for this action, should send you
an open invitation to compete in France 2013, and on World Champ pole.
Respectfully sent,
Lee R Hines
…..........
Roger Morrell