Everyone,

Due to multiple member issues, both health and personal, LASS has regrettably decided NOT to host the Mid-South contest this year (2012).  We regret any inconvenience this causes you.

We understand that Tullahoma may step up and host this event.  Please wait for an announcement from them before making any plans.

4/10/2012   by Dave Flanigan

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The Louisville Area Soaring Society is glad to welcome the 21st Annual Mid-South Soaring Championship back to Louisville.  It will be held on May 25th, 26th, and 27th.  For details click on Contests, then Mid-South Soaring Championships 2012.

“Just a brief note. Guys the warm spell we are experiencing right now is a perfect time to visit the slope in Frankfort. Dick Weidner and I went up there yesterday (Thursday). The air was some of the best I have ever seen. You could roll or loop to your hearts content with NO loss of height. The lift band went very far out from the hill.”

And then on Sunday (12/17) we put out the notice that LASS was heading out for a full-frontal attack on the Frankfort slope!

10 pilots from all over showed up. Tom Hill from Tennessee even made the trek to fly with us and showed us some great DS maneuvres with his Moth 60. Gordy brought out his trusty RnR Synergy 5 and whipped some DS doughnuts. I finally had my Polecat Hammerhead in a groove and made it squeal through some DS turns. Dave Smith was flying a slick Halfpipe.

Tony Utley experimented with some aerial photography with mixed results – more info on that to come, for sure! Ken Marks showed up with his trusty Bowman’s Hobbies Scooter and his mountain bike for a little excitement afterwards on the Capital View Trail.

Photos were taken!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZgYHVNT1dQ

Here’s a photo Tony shot!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nex12go/4222130431/

First thing I want to mention is that the club had a slope work day a couple weeks back.  Ed, Jack, Tony and myself cleared about 100″ of slope access, its the widest and clearest its ever been!  All of the big trees are gone from either side and even some of the ones that were down a bit in front are gone. It was blowing over 25mph mostly South but it turned at the end of our work day so we got to do some flying too.  Jon from Scale Reproductions joined us, putting up over an hour flight with a ParkZone T-28 electric foam park flyer…motor off for the most part.  It was his first time on a slope and after that he’s clearly hooked!

Since then he’s  tried another smaller ParkZone Military plane and kept it up for over 2 hours! We are all watching the wind these days, remember SouthWest is perfect, South-Southwest works.   As always, don’t throw your plane off if the birds are flapping their wings!
Pretty sure Ed got some photos, I’ll add them later.

Gordy

First our flying site:

RC Soaring Clubs have co-existed in Public Parks all over the USA…the reason RC Sailplanes work in parks is because they don’t fly around making noise, but mostly they don’t fly ‘around’.  When a RC sailplane guy or club is using a park field, he and his activities are mostly invisible. Even when a club is having an active day of soaring, other park users take little notice since for the most part the sailplanes are gone…either up high or away from the field.  Othe park users may see someone standing in the field looking up, but pretty much take no notice….so when sailplane activity is there, its not really “there”. Birds can be heard, other activities can be going on the field. Sailplanes fly ‘from’ a field, not over a field.  No flight lines are needed, safety fences, or locked access gates.  When we are flying we are mostly invisible….in fact testimony of local neighbors find our sailplanes are a value, beauty and emphasis nature, in general beneficial as an attraction to the park.

Over the years we all flew some electric powered aircraft before or after and sometimes during our club soaring days (mostly Thursday evenings and Sundays)…but then it was carbon brushed motors and Nicads which equaled a few 4 or 5 minute flights.   This past year The Chinese entered the Park Flyer scene with good flying exceptionally cheap foam powered aircraft, ready to fly. Visitors saw us flying our old electric stuff and figured it must be “okay” to fly electric powered aircraft in parks…specifically on our club park soaring site…and that lead to a HUGE increase in guys showing up to fly electric powered foamies (Parkflyers).  It really wasn’t a problem until it was explained that the site was not a “flying field” but rather a club rc glider site. That lead to the guests getting very agressive during a club soaring contest… to the point where the Park Security Officer was contacted and he dispatched the Police.  This scenario has been repeated over and over around the country as guys who purchased their “toy” model airplanes felt that parks were public and so they could do what they wanted in them….our club by the way has no authority to restrict or block any kind of activity at the park, but since we have had a permit/contract to fly rc gliders on the site since the early 90′s and Charlie Vettiner has been the official soaring site for the Louisville Area Soaring Society since about 1952 we are the legal users of the field for rc. 

The police arrived and found that the sign on the site stated “Model Airplane Flying Field” as did the Park Website…and our permit was not in proper order, so they didn’t feel that they could stop anyone from flying any kind of model at the field.

The incident worked against the LASS members and for the LASS members….in that it was clear that we could no longer fly the occassional electric powered model at the site and for us because the incident mentioned inspired a new Permit to be issued to the LASS specifying RC Glider Flying Site, and improved from a couple days a week permit to 365 days per year.

The park is under a plan to improve and modify its design for the future and a number of ‘town hall’ type meetings were held to offer up several different plans for the neighbors and users to choose from. ALL of the plans included our flying site field on them…and the final version was turned into a 3D archectual model…with scaled down versions of our sailplanes actually flying above the field and the park!!!

At each meeting a park neighbor stood up to say how much the enjoyed the model giders flying over head, so quietly, naturally adding to the beauty of the park.

A huge thanks to Club Co-founder, Club President, LSFV, LSFVP Ed Wilson for being there at the Flying Field and club’s start and for carefully protecting the soaring site for generations ahead.

Next installment will be “Exciting Member Achivements 2011″ – And we have a BUNCH!

Gordy

Louisville Area Soaring Society

Summer 2011 Two Channel Contest Series

The Louisville Area Soaring Society will hold its annual “2 Channel” soaring contest series at our home field, Charlie Vettiner Park in Louisville Kentucky. The concept of the contest is to foster and welcome participation by anyone at any level of soaring capability and to provide a starting point to any soaring pilot who wishes to participate in larger contests or the achievement of League of Silent Flight tasks. Any sailplane may be used, but only TWO functions are allowed. Please come out and join us!

Contests will be Simple Duration, Seeded Man on Man

There will be 3-5 rounds of 7- 12 minutes duration per contest to be determined by weather and the contest director, there will be a minimum of 3 scoring rounds to qualify as an LSF contest.

First round group placement will be by random selection and number of launch stations. Subsequent group placement will be seeded Man on Man by score.

If the pilot succeeds in achieving the maximum time in the round, an additional 2 minutes will be allowed, without further flight score, to land the model. Flight beyond the 2 minute landing allowance voids the flight for flight score. Warm-up and test flights will be allowed before contest and between rounds if the field is clear. Normally start gathering at about 11:00. Pilots meeting will be at 12:00.

Scoring

Scores will be simple duration, 1 point per second, then the landing scores added. The scoring for all rounds will be normalized to 1000 points for each group (i.e. there will be 2 or more flight groups per round, each flight group is normalized by only the pilots scores in their flight group).

Landings

Landings will be scored with the club’s 100 point landing tapes.

If aircraft lands inverted or sheds parts during the landing the pilot receives a zero landing score.

Off field landing voids the flight score.

Launching Equipment

Club will supply launching equipment. Electrics are allowed with launches limited to high start altitude determined by timer or CD or altitude motor cut-off. Any further run of the motor disqualifies the flight.     ONE re-launch per pilot per contest.

Dates

There will be 5 contest dates.  May 1^st, June 5^th, July 3^rd, August 7^th, September 18^th.

Entry Fee

An entry fee of $3.00 per pilot will be collected.

Prizes

Any donations of items will be given out as prizes at the final contest.

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.