Bissonnette Memorial

Lost Hills-Bissonnette Mirage Field May 24 / 25, 2014

AMA Sanction No. 627, America’s Cup Contest

Lost Hills Association membership required.

Timers This is a fly one flight, time one flight contest. Please buddy up with another flyer for each event. If you are new to Lost Hills and do not know any other flyers please see me and I will set you up with another flyer. For all fly-offs you need to bring a timer to the line and a random pull of the time cards will select your timer for the flight. Thank you in advance for your corporation on this subject.

Special Award for each day A 180 is Max DVD will be awarded to the flyer who has high time for each day of the contest no matter which event is entered.

Round 1 8:00 - 9:00 F1A - 210 sec, F1B / F1C / F1P - 240 sec

Round 2 9:10 -10:10 180 sec for all following rounds

Round 3 10:20 -11:20

Round 4 11:30 - 12:30

Round 5 12:40 - 1:40

Round 6 1:50 - 2:50

Round 7 3:00 - 4:00

Fly-offs start at 5:00 pm. Ten minute rounds with ten minutes between events. Each contestant that is in a fly-off must provide a timer for the timer pool for that round. No timer, no can fly! Please bring a timer and help out with all the events.

F1GHJQ and Vintage FAI Power will have Round 1 timed to the ground. Round one will be used to determine the winner if two or more are tied after the second fly-off round.

Round 1 7:30 – 8:00 One flight timed to the ground

Round 2 9:00 -10:00 120 sec for F1GHJ all rounds, 180 seconds for F1Q

Round 3 10:00 -11:00

Round 4 11:00 - 12:00

Round 5 12:00 - 1:00

Round 1 9:00 -10:00 120 sec for all rounds

Round 2 10:00 -11:00

Round 3 11:00 - 12:00

Round 1 7:30 – 8:00 One flight timed to the ground

Round 2 9:00 -10:00 180 seconds all rounds

Round 3 10:00 -11:00

Round 4 11:00 - 12:00

Round 5 12:00 - 1:00

Two round fly-offs starting at 1:30 pm for F1GHJQ, E-36 and Vintage FAI Power. Ten minute rounds with ten minutes between events. Each contestant that is in a fly-off must provide a timer for the timer pool for that round. Please bring a timer and help out with all events.

Entry Fee for F1ABCGHJPQ, E-36, Vintage FAI Power: $15.00 Open/ Senior for first event, second event $10.00. $5.00 Junior per event. Lost Hills Association membership required.

As some people may have figured SEN editorial staff are “en Voyage” to Australia to take part in the OZ World Cup Trifecta at Narrandera. Most of the trip is going well, although we are not achieving the sporting results we would like. But the hostelry we have this year, the Midtown Motor Inn is unable to fix their broken WiFi Internet access and few other housekeeping snafus has not endeared them to the modelers staying at their establishment. People with other lodgings seem to have more success. Limited Internet access has affected our ability to get SEN out in the timely manner we like. Also for those who get it by email that process takes some time and has to be monitored periodically to ensure at all copies go out. To do this we need internet access and Trent's cafe in Narrandera with free WiFi is not open in the evening, neither is the public library. While not wanting to discourage people coming to the next World Cup in Narrandera , no, there is no Starbucks or McDonalds. So a few people contacted Allard, “star” of the last SEN and he had not got his copy yet. Sorry about that Allard and hope the weather is good for you and your friends at Sesimovo Usti

Narrandera is one of the World's great free flight sites with huge grass field with unlimited retrieval in every direction. The F1B on third World Cup event was a little windy with the wind speed ranging from 5 to 7m/s with all flights landing on the field and people finding their models. The downside is that motorized retrieval is not permitted and the field is 45km from the town. However lack of motorized retrieval is not a downside for visiting sportsmen as they general don't have one anyway

1. Jama Damier - CAN
2. Craig King - NZL

Brian was the only person to max out. Some wind for early and late rounds, tricky in the middle

1. Vin Morgan – AUS
2. Richard Blackam – AUS
3. Craig Hemsworth – AUS
4. Terry Bond - AUS

All 4 maxed out and flew off the next morning. Windy conditions during the rounds with light winds and unhelpful air for the flyoff

1. Terry Bond – AUS
2. Roy Summersby – AUS
3. Neil Pollock - AUS

No one maxed out, same conditions as F1A

Big winners of the week's long activities were Jama Danier and Roy Summersby who both got 2 wins and a second, followed by Vin Morgan with 2 wins

It's not the Clock but how you wind it

Note that this is not the intended part 2 of the previous editorial but Chuck's reply to Tapio prompted this. Tapio is expressing a general level of frustration felt by many active FAI sportsmen over the inability of the CIAM to get the rules right. While everyone understands that the CIAM representatives are volunteers, there is some prestige and responsibility attached to the job and it looks to those on the outside that there are too many errors and sometimes bizarre decisions. Now it might well be that there are good reasons for some of the actions but the decision making process of the CIAM as a whole and CIAM Free Flight subcommittee in particular is clouded in mystery so no one on the outside really understands the basis for the actions. These days with the open communications of the internet and the proliferation of comments on social media, everyone has a greater expectation of transparency. For example: there may be some unspoken agenda for F1Q to become a World Championship event, and clearly (in the editorial opinion) the rule change to go from controlling power allocation by battery weight was needed but successive rule changes have made F1Q the laughing stock of the electric free flight community and disincentivized participation. I understand that there are some pluses in the latest iteration but no one except the hard core export can keep track of what you can do this year or next. This has led to people wanting to create local exceptions, the very opposite of what the FAI rules are supposed to achieve.

It is very easy to look at the E-36 class and make a comparison to F1Q. Looking at it from my perspective, the details of the rules which people are talking about a lot are not really the most important differences. What is important was how the NFFS went about devising the rules for E-36: a number of people were commissioned to build models to the proposed rules to verify that the rules were practical and that they worked. While there may be some items that are not perfect, they have resisted the temptation to tweak the rules. Having rules which remain unchanged has provided a high level of stability for the participants. Electric powered flight is different from rubber or gas power and we do not have such a heritage so it takes time to figure out how to make the airplanes fly without wondering about which year's rule book to use.

Same thing on Tapio's hobby horse; the rule change proposal was put in to correct an anomaly that arose at the last World Champs. This situation is still confusing and as best I understand the new rule does not fully solve the problem we had at the last World Champs.

If FAI Free Flight was some highly controlled sport like NASCAR the powers that be might be able to penalize someone like Tapio for making comments “not in the best interests of the sport”; however we are not NASCAR so people will continue to “discuss” these items until the CIAM gets it right.

Chuck, please don't take this article as some criticism of the your new role representing the USA in the FAI/CIAM process. Modelers from at least 2 other countries commented positively on the survey you conducted for US FAI Flyers on the issues. They stated that a survey like that had never been done in their country. I do seem to remember it being done in the USA before but in a different way and certainly not every year.