Two Channel Contest Director Dion Dunn is back with his final wrap-up:

Well, we finally made it to the end of the 2-channel contest series, and what a great ending it was.  Round 7 had a mix of everything today, and Mother Nature was once again kind to us and provided some good lift and signaling birds as a bonus.  10 pilots came out to enjoy the Fall weather

Let’s cut right to the chase this time – Gordy kicked our butts with the Gentle Lady.  But you know what the difference was besides the fact that he is tuning up for the big Texas contest next week?  Landing points, landing points, landing points.  For example, Tony and Gordy were only separated by 9 seconds of flying time yet Gordy won by 150 points!  7 out of 10 pilots scored landing points today, but it wasn’t consistent, and I was one of the 3 who didn’t score any.  I’ll admit, I haven’t been practicing and it shows!

More after the jump – and make sure to check out the end-of-season scores on the Club Contests page!

Round 1 started off hot with 7 out of 10 pilots hitting (or exceeding) the 5 minute task.  As we have pointed out before, having the most expensive ship isn’t always an advantage in a contest like this as Hank can attest to.  Hank managed a 6:42 in a 5 minute round because he couldn’t get that big beautiful AVA down to the ground!

Round 2 kicked everyone’s butt in more ways than one.  Let’s start with condolences – John Forney and Tony Utley tried to obtain the same air space in the landing sequence, and the CF leading edge of Tony’s AVA won the battle.  That poor old K-brid couldn’t stand a chance against the AVA….It sort of looked like a hot knife going through butter.  Tony saved it and landed with not much of a scratch, but the K-bird wasn’t so lucky.  John, let’s get her fixed up for next season.  Allen Burnham won the longest flight time of the round with a 4:02 with his Riser, and Dave Flanigan managed a 96 point landing with his Handy hand launch.

Round 3 was once again an active thermal round.  The times were a bit higher and the battle came down to Tony and Gordy flying head to head – a beautiful AVA against a 30+ year old Gentle Lady.  The Gentle Lady won….. John Hoskins also managed a very nice 5:28 with his Vista and also managed to secure a well-deserved 3rd place for the day.

I really think this last round of the contest series summed up what this contest is all about.  New state of the art planes, tried and true classics, ex-contest planes, hand launchers, floaters, hybrid/home-builts, you name it and it was there….but that’s the point – they were all out there flying and having fun together.  I hope everyone has had fun this season with the contest – I know I have and I hope I’m a better pilot for it.  Some thanks are in order as well:  thanks again to Gordy for coming up with the idea and getting us all out there, thanks to everyone who brought a high start out to the field and for letting other people abuse the crap out of them, thanks to Ed Wilson for donating prizes in the middle of the season, thanks to Dave Flanigan for making the balancing units for the top 5 points leaders, and thanks to Grody once again for the Easyglider prize to the points leader.  A special thanks goes out to Ben Wilson for posting scores and pics on the webpage every month, and a final thanks to Allen Burnham for taking over as CD for next year’s 2-Channel contest series!

The top 3 scores for today:
Gordy Stahl – Gentle Lady         1098
Tony Utley – AVA                      948
John Hoskins – Vista                 732

Top 5 Series placeholders:
Dion Dunn – Vista / Sagitta 900  (consistently showing up pays off)
Dave Flanigan – Handy / Sagitta 600
Allen Burnham – Riser
Steven Spratt – Bird of Time / Thermik
Ed Wilson – Hobie Hawk

Until next year,

Dion

Thanks to all who came out and braved Mother Nature for today’s 2 Channel contest.  9 pilots were rewarded with a pretty decent day after a few rain drops before the start.  The lift turned out to be pretty decent, and as usual, I got a good burn on my neck and face.

Hey Gordy, how’s that old saying go?  If you can’t buy a better plane, find a better thermal?  Translated into ‘become a better pilot’?  Well what happens when you take a darn good pilot already, and arm him with one of the best RES planes in the World?  You get today’s winner – Tony and his AVA took home the honors in fine fashion.  Congrats!

Read more after the jump or check out the scores on the Club Contests page!
But wait, the biggest isn’t always the best.  Coming in a close second was Gordy and the venerable Gentle Lady.  After a shaky start at the field, the Lady was hooked up and nailing thermals and crashing the landing tape like it was a new high performance 2-meter or something.  The nerve of some old women…..

Harold Jackson made the long trek up once again and put on a pretty good show with the Vista.  Thanks for making the drive Harold.  Speaking of Vista’s, we had another show up.  Sean (sp?) brought his out and got some hands on flight training with a high start and the winch.  All at the best field and best club in the Country.  How’s that for an introduction to the hobby?!

Allen tried to fulfill his LSF Level 1 requirements all in one day (and I think he did it).  Lee was treating the Monarch like a rocket ship on launches and brought in a heck of a flight at the end.  And once again, the purple people eater could be found floating around the sky.

The Renaud Brothers would be proud as there were 2 Sagitta 600’s and one 900 on the field today (Ed, Dave and myself).  And at one point or another, they all flew pretty darn well.  But the key to today was landing points.  In the first round, 5 out of 9 pilots hit the tape for points.  However, after that the magic repellent of the tape kicked in, only 4 more pilots hit the tape in the next 2 rounds combined.  When they did, they hit it strong.  Gordy had 3 landings in the points; 78, 99, and 70.  Tony had 2 in the points: 88 and 97.  Ed also had 2 in the points at 89 and 91.  Strong landing scores for not having any landing control, although I don’t think the Gentle Lady was designed for “crashing screen door” landings.

So, all in all it was a pretty good day and best of all, the planes went home in one piece.  To top it all off, Dave Flanigan was nice enough to make up some home made CG balancing rigs to be handed out to the season points leaders next month.  These are beautiful units, and Dave did a fine job putting them together.  Thanks much Dave!

The next contest date is Sunday, October 4th at Noon.  This will be the LAST 2-channel event of the season, so come on out and have some laid back contest fun for the last time this year.

The scores will be sent to Ben to post on the website, and here are the top three for today:

1)  Tony Utley                AVA
2)  Gordy Stahl              Gentle Lady
3)  Dave Flanigan          Sagitta 600

Dion

Contest Director Dion Dunn gives his report below:

Well after a pretty crappy week of weather, Mother Nature was kind to us today wasn’t she?  And if you were lucky enough to be at the field, it was a pretty good day too.  Lift was there, although so was a lot of mixed wind, draws, and downdrafts, so it was a tricky day at times.  A big thank you to everyone who came out.

Read on for more exciting details and check out the August 2 scores and series standings here!
Round 1 (5 minute round) got off to a good start with everyone putting in pretty good times.  We had 3 highstarts running at a time and 7 pilots went up and came back down in one piece.  John Forney looked like he was going to take us all to school again with the K-bird, but Allen had his Riser flying nicely again right out of the gate and took an early lead.  It must be all of that control-line flying, although I can’t figure out how that help’s Allen’s thermal flying….  The landing zone was tricky today, and the multiple currents and draws were making it tough too, but 3 out of 7 pilots managed to score some landing points.  Remember for all of you readers out there, we aren’t using any landing control.  And this month we didn’t have to see Ed Wilson trying to murder his Hobie Hawk.  Ed put up a good time with a borrowed Spirit.

A big thanks to Ed Wilson and the LSF organization for supplying 3 polo shirts to the top 3 pilots today.  That was a great touch, and totally unexpected.

Read on for more details after the jump, or check out the scores on our Club Contest page!

Ed Wilson flying the Hobie Hawk and Allen Burnham flying the Riser were up next, and although Ed used the crappy hi-start and only got about 25 ft off the launch, he managed to play around with a bunch of low level lift until his control horn decided to break and end his day. Luckily, the plane seemed to survive the spiral landing. Allen showed us all how to fly in the first round by posting a 5:07 (in a 5 minute round) and just out of the landing points. After fighting with trim issues during my first flight, I managed to capture some landing points (49) after a fairly short flight.

Round 2 was a 7 minute round with John and Dave both showing the way at a 7:29 and 7:25 but no landing points. I’m sitting there talking to Ed and we hear this loud screaming coming from the field – It was the Sagitta diving to the deck with Dave trying to get that thing DOWN to make his time. On those two flights, John and Dave could have stayed up all day. Since Ed was out of the competition, Allen and I fly the next set but neither of us fair too well. After a crappy launch, I overshot the landing area and tried to get fancy with a down-wind turn. Please remind me not to do that again as I managed to spiral it in and break the rudder. My day was done.

The final round was fairly uneventful, with John Forney managing 3 landing points, and Allen staying up for a 5:11. Only 2 landings in the points today, so we still need practice at those landings. But in that final round, John managed to pull out a second place by 1 second over Allen! Congrats to Dave today for taking home the imaginary wood. The final standings are as follows:

Dave Flanigan – 1st place with 836 points
John Forney – 2nd place with 728 points
Allen Burnham – 3rd place with 727 points
Dion Dunn – 4th place with 242 points (2 rounds)
Ed Wilson – 5th place with 107 points (1 round)

The next contest is Sunday, August 2nd.

Dion

Mother Nature really gave us a good one today.  The air was clear, the sun was hot, and the winds were stronger than the predicted 6 mph at times. However, there was also a good bit of lift making its way through the field.  Launches were pretty good and many pilots were popping right into lift off the line.  This also made for a rats nest of high start lines during the second group, so we decided to move them to try to compensate.  It sort of worked…..we still needed vigilant shaggers to catch the lines after release and pull them back in straight away.  Speaking of shaggers, we had a couple of people out there who weren’t even flying.  Thank you very much for you efforts.

Next contest is JULY 12th, 2009! Got a 2-channel (rudder/elevator) plane? Bring it out!

Go check out the final scores for the day or read on for more tantalizing details after the jump!

Some highlights of the day?  Picture this – Ed brings his beautiful Hobie Hawk back out for another go and proceeds to rip a wing and stab off as he crosses another highstart line just off the ground.  He says it’s fixable, so out of pity I give him another launch….then he settles in for a nice 4:59 flight on a 5 minute task.  I shouldn’t have had pity. The second flight he tries to rip the wingtip off while landing, and it gets taped back on for the third flight. All in all, not bad for a 5th place!  At the other end of the spectrum Tony brought his little Handy hand launch out and has some great flights with a mild toss.  I remember when Dave kicked all of our butts with his Handy, and knowing Tony is a good stick made me a bit worried.  But that little plane just couldn’t figure out how to go up the line on a high start.  Once again, Harold Jackson drove up with his Vista from TN to party with us.  Thanks Harold.  Gordy brought the only foamie to the field with his Easy Glider.  Based on his times, we should have used it to keep my water bottles cool instead.  Just kidding Gordy…..

Landings seemed a little better today with myself, John O., Lee, Gordy, Tony, Rick, Dave F., and Brian all having one or more landings within the tape.  That was no easy task today with wind, lift and no landing controls.  Speaking of landings, Brian tried to nail a 100 pointer with his Photon by diving it straight in from about 150 ft off the ground.  Unfortunately, he missed the tape and his wing needs a tad bit of work.

But today was mostly about flight time.  No big landing points to catapult anyone to the top.  Rick and his Vista mastered the skies with a total score of 792 with only 17 of those points from landings.  Steven and the Purple People Eater were really floating today with a total time of 750 points (seconds), but again, no landing.  I think we were just lucky it actually came down.  Somehow me and the Sagitta 900 managed to come in 3rd with a total score of 643, but I did have 64 landing points pulling me from what would have been a 4th place finish up into the 3rd spot.

Here is the top 5:
1) Rick  792
2) Steven  750
3) Dion  643
4) Dave F.  621
5) Ed  620

Full scores for the day and the ongoing series are up on the Club Contest page!

Again, a big thank you for all who participated in today’s contest.  Just a reminder as voted on during the scores readout (by all who were standing there), we will be moving the July contest to Sunday, July 12th instead of July 5th.  Yours truly and a number of others would be out of town for the Holiday, so our turnout might be better moving it a week out.  Besides, without me there who would write these exciting, Pulitzer prize quality reports?

Dion

Bruce Davidson launching under stormy skies, St. Louis

Our own Bruce Davidson just capped off a few weeks abroad in Europe, competing in the German F3K Open in Dresden – a huge, multi-national handlaunch soaring event. Bruce placed 35th out of a huge field of 94 pilots, and 2nd among all US pilots. Check out more conversation about the German F3K Open on RCGroups.

Bruce and his wife Christine then embarked on a week of sightseeing in Italy, making their way back home just in time for the MVSA’s Gateway Handlaunch Contest! Bruce battled with the ever-stronger St. Louis crew and ended up on top after two days of good flying. Read the MVSA contest report here!

Be sure to read Bruce’s German F3K Open report after the jump!

Another great contest is in the books. First off I want to thank all of the people that were working so hard to make this a must attend event. Christine and I had a big time and the bus tour to Dresden was one of the high points. That place is incredible and providing us with an interpreter was over the top. The contest started tough for me with a bit of bad luck on top of a coupe of bad decisions. By round three my chances were gone. The level of skill in this event is unmatched. My goals changed from getting in the flyoffs to supporting the team and putting the hurt on as many pilots as I could. I was taking a few more chances. As much as we bitch about bad conditions it is situations like this that make a great contest even better at sorting out the best on the field. Friday started with rain and we had a short break around noon for a pilots meeting then one flight group before the real storms came in. Team MMT had a big tent and I had about 8 pounds of snacks so we had some quality time while we waited it out. After three rounds they called it a day and we hit a local eatery for some great food and local beer. Saturday was the day of wind. I had the ballast box full all day and was quite happy with the way the Sirius handled the conditions. I only landed out once and that was mostly due to focusing on the plane and not my position down wind. When the ground came into view it was an oh crap moment! I felt like I could have pushed harder when I left the thermal an made it. I had moved up quite a bit in the standings by Saturday evening. Flying was over around 7 as we made our way to the on field dinner. It is hard to beat the Pole Cat pig roast but these guys did an outstanding job. They put a full champagne glass in everyones hand to kick things off with a toast. The buffet had all of the standard German fare and plenty of it. After dinner the live swing/brass band kept things hopping while the beer kept flowing. The band thought they were done for the night but the crowd was relentless and they could not refuse an encore. Sunday morning we finished the rest of round 9 and only had enough time to complete the 10th round before the flyoffs. I finished in 35th place with 92% of the top score. After my rough start, I was happy. For the finals I was tapped to call for Jonas Ekman. We started with 5×2 and he nailed all but the final transition with a small overflight and a stumble on the catch giving up about 4 seconds to much. Next round was all up, last down. The first flight was an easy get for the entire field. For the second flight we moved to the upwind corner of the field and got a good read before launch. It was forward and way right and as soon he hooked up the entire field joined us for another max. The third flight was dicy and nearly everyone landed in the order they would finish in the standings with just a couple of pilots getting the max. The last task was last flight counts with a 5 min max. On the first throw most went downwind and caught a fast mover with lots of energy. It didn’t take long for everyone to be way up and way out. As we discussed a strategy to get home another thermal popped at the end of the field so Jonas pushed to it for some more altitude on the way home. Big Congratulations to Christoph Mebus for not only winning the big dance but also winning the Junior class. YES HE IS A JUNIOR!

I learned a lot hanging out and flying with my new MMT (Sirius) team mates. That was some impressive flying Mattias and Jonas, congragulations. I have a new set of skills to develop.

Now to get everything packed up and ready for the flight to Rome.

Bruce Davidson

Check out Gordon Buckland’s Saturday and Sunday reports at RCGroups!

Gordy's 8-Hour LSF V Slope Flight Team (l-to-r: AJ, Gordy, Lee, Bob Summers and Frankfort-slope-discoverer Dave Smith)

Two weekends ago, our own Gordy Stahl did what he said he could never do… the LSF Level V 8-hour slope flight. Not only that, but he did it TWICE in one weekend!  Gordy and a team of hardy individuals flew for 16 hours over two days at the Frankfort, Kentucky Slope, getting Gordy one step closer to his goal of finally becoming a League of Silent Flight Level V pilot – an honor only 124 other pilots have received in the last 30+ years. Gordy tells his epic tale after the jump:

Coming up to that weekend, the forecast was promising SW winds for Frankfort virtually for Friday, Sat and Sunday…I posted notes on the RC Soaring Exchange about my planned attempt and an invitation to anyone else who might like to give it a shot, figuring misery loves company. Saturday was blowing with only a few parts of the day getting a bit short on lift.  Bob and I were both toasted from the heat and sun and at times he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hang in because of the heat, but Ed Wilson stayed close and kept him motivated and aware. I got a few instances of distraction, finding that I’d let my ship lose all its altitude, having to focus again to get back to a safe height and area.

Bob Summers (age 71) in the 8-hour pose

It was at 7 hours and 11 minutes that we all got to chatting about where we were going to celebrate the day…I know because I looked at my watch.  The banter continued and after a bit I decided to look at the watch again…and didn’t look back up soon enough because I heard Ed yell out that a plane was going in….I wasn’t too concerned because there was plenty of slope foamies darting around…but when I looked back, my plane was gone….and hard into a the top of a tree well down on the slope.  A gorgeous wooden Marauder…dead.

The cost of looking away with 7 hours, 52 minutes to go: a dead Marauder

Bob finished off his flight to hoops and hollers but my stupidity kind of put a damper on what needed to be an amazing life experience.  I did my best to keep things light saying there would be other days and attempts, when Dave Smith said,”Hey the conditions are still looking great for tomorrow, lets get this done!”

Everyone else chimed in with support, I felt I couldn’t give up with all those great guys willing to spend another hot day on the slope to help me get it.  So I agreed, lets do it! I got my Super AVA out and checked everything..Bob had put 4 C CopperTops under his wing saddle of his AVA, and left everything in the plane unchanged, so I stopped on the way home and bought a box of 4, soldered them up and stuff them in the pod, same as Bob’s.  I didn’t have my 2.4 TX home so I borrowed Lee’s and at the slope the next morning programmed it for my SuperAVA.

The wind Sunday was supposed to be more South, and at 7am was forecasted to be at 10mph already…at 9am, it was only about 3mph, and the passing birds were flapping.   I decided to super tune the CG so that the model was flying as efficiently as possible. About 10 hand tosses and all the lead I had in the nose of the model later, it was set…and had I not done it, things would have been another ugly result.

I decided that I had to get the model up and the clock started or the day would run out before I could complete the 8 hours…. So I bungee’d up to about 50′ over the slope and proceeded to fly what little lift there was, S’ing back and forth, the smoothest I’d ever flown….for one whole hour!  What I thought was the most difficult flying I’d ever do in my life time….little did I realize that as the day went on that would be tested.

The air picked up and the slope compression was the best I’d ever seen on our hill.  Lee and AJ, Doug and Dave were always 50′ to 60′ off the slope combating and DS’ing.  At one point they were thermal’d up as high as my Super AVA!  140″ at 46oz versus 50″ at about 60ozs….they were easily up over 700′!

At 7 hours and 30 minutes exactly….(according to the Talking Timer official shot clock) the air died completely, no birds, no thermals, no wind!  The plane was at about 100′ as it slid over the slope face heading toward the left.  I noticed that the sun seemed to be shinning on the ridge way off so took a chance to just trim the model for its best glide and let it go.  She worked her way that way without losing an inch.

All eyes were watching her as she extended out over that far ridge of trees, moving well and maybe gaining just a bit.  I did some S runs away from the ridge toward the center of the valley and got some alt doing that, but found it safer to just keep her moving along that ridge.  It was pretty hard to see it, and one stall or thumb mistake would have put her into those woods, likely lost forever.  I let her head almost all the way to Hyw 64 and along that path to the ridge on the far right side, where I could see some birds working a really small and light bit of nothing.  By the time she was back over the face of the slope…all of 10mins had passed, 20 more to go!  ARGH!

Seeing the sun was still on that left ridge, I did the circuit once more, By the time I got all the way  around to about the Tower on the right, Some birds were forming up again…so I pointer her that was and watched.  Nothing dramatic was indicated as far as lift went but the birds seemed to be holding so I began to very carefully and passively began to circle, hoping just to burn more minutes.  It worked and I’d gained about 50′ more than I’d started the whole thing at.

By the time I’d brought her back to the slope face, the wind came back up, thermals popped and the DS guys were back at it harder than ever. It was super satisfying to complete the task and everyone urged me to add the extra 8 minute lost from the previous day’s attempt to get an even 16 hours over the two days!

Thanks to everyone for their help and support and believing I could do it.

Just the 10K Goal and Return left, looks like we are going to try for a group day of G&R’s on the road in front of the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington in the near future.

Gordy

The grass was wet, and that was all of the moisture we saw until we were almost packed up.  The air was actually pretty favorable with some lift blowing through the field and nice launches being had by most.  I think I even spotted the sun a couple of times.

We flew in 2 groups of 3 even though we had 5 high starts laid out (see above).  The first group was John O., Lee, and Ed.  Lee brought out his nicely constructed OlyII picked up (or should I say stolen?) at Toledo and proceeded to grab a 15 second flight after a pop off.  Everyone at the field breathed a sigh of relief as we all thought the little master was beatable on this Sunday – stay tuned.  Ed decided to bring out his beautiful Hobie Hawk.  After some shaky trim flights and a determination that it had negative washout, he hooked it up anyway and managed to bring it down in one piece at a 1:28.  That sure is a good looking bird in the air.  John finished up with a clean, but shorter 1:17.  NO landing points for anyone.  OK, well, this could be a really short day.

The second group stepped up and took a crack at the air, all of us feeling confident that we could move into the lead.  Harold had a respectable flight with his Vista at 1:49, but missed the landing.  Steven had the purple people eater out (officially a Thermic 100), and we all kept our fingers crossed that the spar would hold up.  Well it did, and Steven managed a nice 2:08 but also missed the landing.  My turn with the Vista, and I managed to grab a 3:47.  My thumbs were feeling good on this day, but again my landing (or lack of) skills got in the way and I almost took John’s head off.  As a result of the landing, I stripped the elevator servo and almost lost the ship during the round 2 launch.  My day was finished.

I won’t go into all of the detail for rounds 2 and 3 because none of the times were much better than round one.  As a matter of fact, that 3:47 I nabbed in round one was the longest flight of the day (see, don’t you wish you would have been there?).  However, Lee came charging from the back and scored 60 points on his round 2 landing and 94 points in round 3 with flights of 1:46 and 1:47 respectively.  How much do landing points mean in a contest like this?  Even though I only had one good flight, I had more flight time than Lee but he managed to nab the overall win.

So, everyone took their planes home in one piece and a good time was had by all.  A big thanks to Harold who wins the furthest distance travelled award.  Tony also came out and snapped a few pics and showed us his thumbs still work by nicely guiding Lee’s Oly around the field after the contest was over.  Tony, we need to get you flying again.

The final results:

1)  Lee              382 points
2)  Steven         333 points
3)  John O.        330 points
4)  Ed              306 points
5)  Harold          291 points
6)  Dion            244 points

Practice your landings!

Dion