Day 3 continued...

Sheesh.... I hope those synchronized swimming pictures don't make it into the K-Factor! Ill be toast as a VP not to mention being banned from most all hotel pool areas around the world.

As Mark mentioned, it was a pretty good day for Team Canada. Dez had crappy conditions and managed a pretty good flight all things considered. I believe the blow out was actually stronger than yesterday afternoon as crab angles were very high. Being able to handle the wind and maintaining the requisite track was hard work for the early flights today. The winds pretty much stayed that way for the first couple hours then started to die down a little.

Massive sounding Canadian cheering section!

Much discussion over the past few days over back up planes... do you need them? If you had one would you bring it out of the car? Why assemble it if your primary always works? etc. etc. Well we were first hand witnesses to an example.... one of the Argentinian team members YS would not fire up....... mayhem in the pits as they scrambled to change glow drivers, try another starter, flip the plane over. ... all the glow starting tricks. No joy followed by much consternation (and a few choice words I am sure.. I don't speak Argentinian so I could be wrong:-)

After three minutes passed the official timer announced "time" and the flight opportunity was lost. Not sure if he had one in his car but no backup plane was present on the flight line. I felt for the guy.

I had a much better flight as I fought with strong blow out conditions. Mark did his usual stellar calling job and we received a good score for the team. 499.40 to be exact :-) It felt good throughout the flight but I had used up a lot of my power supply. The batteries took a beating but lasted long enough to make it home after a somewhat crushed 6 sided loop. Sorry Jack!

Chad prepares for his round.

Harry Ells calls as Chad puts in his best round of the event.




Chad's round was "locked in" and everyone enjoyed the solid flight in relatively calm winds. This should place him into the semi's if his math is correct. Funny thing but even though he had a backup airframe ready to go on the flight line, it had suffered a bump or such to his left stab. This caused the threaded titanium rod to pull out of the nylon BB clevis and rendered the airplane unserviceable had he needed it.

Chad had also suffered some stress cracking around the gear plate area and Harry Ells was put to work making repairs.

Mark and I relax after the third round. We had a great day and look forward to day 4.

Day 3 Wind, Wind Go Away

Hi everyone, we were up at the crack of dawn and out the hotel at 6:30am as Dezso was scheduled to fly at around 7:15am. After a few delays he took to the skies in..........you guessed it strong blow out wind conditions. This first few pilots had a bit of difficulty as the winds at the top of the box seemed to be blowing about twice as hard as down low and many choose to start their sequences downwind ???. Dezso chose the correct direction and was working really hard but didn't mange to surpass his previous days scores. I'm sure he'll bounce back tomorrow afternoon.

Dave was up next and he flew his best round of the competition and even when he knew there was a drop in power through the last couple of maneuvers he stayed with the aircraft and managed to complete his routine without any zeros. The only casualty was a puffed cell on one of his packs, but if you are going to stretch a pack beyond it's limits this was the time to do it. The result was a score of 499 something which I'm sure Dave will clarify later today on this blog.

Next up was Chad and the pattern gods were with him today as when it came time for him to fly the winds stopped all of a sudden for a period of about 10 minutes. Chad put in a beauty of a round and got a round of applause from everyone on the flight line. Simply magic to watch!!!

The boys then took off to a local park to test fly one of the kites we have bought at the flying site. For $105 Canadian we each purchased a high performance carbon kite complete with flight strings and control straps. This type of kite would retail for around $300 in Canada. Xavier's kite was the test model as we all took it for a spin and it wasn't long before we were doing knife edge passes, Cuban eights etc. It's quite a work out to fly those things in high winds but what a blast and a way to get away from flying for a while.

It was quite the work out flying the kites so we headed back to the hotel for a quick dip in the roof top pool. Keeping in the spirit of pattern competition, Dave and I demonstrated the finer points of synchronized swimming. We hear the judges didn't score us well however :) I think we got downgraded for uneven tans. :)

Team Placings

http://www.argentinaf3a.com/preliminary-flights.aspx as of day 4.