Day 4 - The lady sings.....

Slept in today as Team Canada takes to the skies at line "A" in the afternoon. It was a nice change. I'll be first up followed by Chad and then Dezso. I'll update when we get back....

Ok I am back! It was carnage in Santa Fe when we arrived at the airport this morning. Strong winds prevailed.. Mark says the winds on Sunday, added to Monday & Tuesday equaled what was experienced today! 8 t0 9 meters per second with gusts to 13 created havoc for landings in particular. The first 11 fliers on line "B" had finished their flights with no less that 5 of them suffering damage to both wings and gear. The worst was Bernhard Schaden's Onyx that suffered major damage when the prop hit the ground.

Here Chad and Mark check out the damage. A very clean break that should be easily repaired.

After a short break due to the high winds. The head of the competition Mario Korman checks wind speed with Marco Mechanico observing.

We headed to the other flight line to set up and prepare for our afternoon flights. It is very windy......... and I probably would not have risked my plane if I was at my home field but hey, this is the worlds! Mark and I prepped the planes as we readied for my final P-07 flight of the contest. I am a realist and the chances of making the semi's is very slim ( this means non-existent :-) I would need a 550 or so to make it and ... well maybe wishful thinking, not really possible in the company of the great fliers that are present.

There were many delays prior to my flight. Try as he might, our team manager Harry Ells tried to keep us concentrating on the task at hand but unfortunately the local peeler palace sent over a few scantily clad girls to promote their establishment. I tried my best to not be taken off focus so I left the picture taking to my fellow Canadian Teammate Xavier.

Xavier did a pretty good job of capturing the moment?don't you think.

Anyhow.. back to RC flying.... lots of excitement on both takeoff and landings the winds were howling. Lots of zero landings as many planes inadvertently ended up behind the flight line as they overshot their final approach. One airplane from Brazil missed Dezso by 5 feet as it made it's landing. It ended up to the right and behind the judges station. The takeoffs were equally interesting.

I "launched" my Twister for my final flight and fought the strong winds as best I could. Not a great performance but I was happy I had the opportunity to compete at this level. I zeroed the spin entry as the plane pitched way to high in the strong winds. Sheesh twice in three days... not my usual style. I managed to get it back to terra firma in one piece and was rewarded with a 400 score. Sorry to let the team down but this will end up as the throw away round for the event. I'll end up in 50th position out of 83 competitors.

Chad was next up on our team and put in another great round with only minor errors observed. He seemed happy with the flight even with the stiff winds. He ended up with a 500 score and finished in 22nd position overall. This qualifies him for the semi-finals starting Friday. Congratulations Chad well done! My mechanico Mark has now been promoted to help Chad during the semi's.

Ultimate starter motors... powered by Flight Power!

Dez was last up for our team and had a good round going until he got blown in the last few elements. Aside from this he had a good competition and was awarded 37th place overall.

As I wrap up my slice of the worlds competition, I would be remiss to not thank the many folks that have helped support me through this effort. To the fine folks at Duralite Flight Systems & CRC Products.ca, my fellow club members at the Victoria Radio Control Modelers Society, the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada, the Vancouver based RCFCBC.... in particular Kevin Forsyth and Shaun Lammers, and fellow fliers Mike Scho, Brian Weekley and Greg Jestico for their technical support (i.e. borrowed stuff!) and Bob Stovel for his lathe work. The many contributors throughout Canada that sent funds (or bought raffle tickets.:-) in support of our team.

I sincerly thank you all.

Special thanks to our Team Manger Harry Ells for his support and efforts to make things easy for us pilots... well done. Of course we really know that it's Rosemary that should get the credit!

Most importantly a big THANK YOU to my helper, fellow flyer and good friend Mark Byrne for his unending support and assistance during these past few weeks. He was and is always ready to lend a hand and offer advice and constructive criticism when needed. This has made my experience here all the more memorable.

Mark and I after the fourth round.

Also "Thanks" to Mark's wife Robyn for keeping us all entertained with Kelly and her exploits in Santa Fe. http://islandcachers.blogspot.com/

It was truly a great experience and with luck and hard work, I... actually we all hope to return to these World Championships in future years. The team will now throw it's support behind Chad as he carries the flag into the semi finals starting Friday. It continues to be a great experience!

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.

Day 2

A nice sleep in... well until 07:00 anyway! We took it easy this morning as we fly in the afternoon. We headed out to the "B" Flight Line as we will swap both early and late slots and flight lines each day.

Dez was first up and had a very solid flight in strong blow out conditions. He held the distance quite well and was one of the best flights I have seen him do. Dez seemed pleased with the flight.

I was up next and had a so so flight in my opinion. I blew the spin... ya haven't done that in years... sheesh and tried hard to fight the wind. More speed would have made a much better presentation.

Sound check on the Twister

Lot's of people had trouble with the wind and this made for some exiting takeoffs and landings. One fellow was half way though his routine when his radio connection failed (for unknown reasons) and his plane went in hard. Sad to see anytime.

Here he talks with the officials as they try and determine cause.

Chad had a great flight but didn't seem to get the scores that I thought he deserved. The humpty bump earned a 9 from one judge and a 4 from another??? He was happy with the flight but not the scores... total point spread was 144 ouch... such is life sometimes.

The Argentinian Marcello Columbo is one of the local favourites and drew a large audience of flyers.

Canada now sits in 11th place overall so we have to pick up the pace.

Day One ... by Dave

Out of the rack at 05:45 in preparation for day one of competition. Now this is about the time when our team manager Harry Ells is heading towards the flying site in the dark carrying his team's transmitters. This is the downside to the team managers position because each and every day that a team member competes, his TX must be in impound by 06:30 I believe. I am sure Rosemary deserves a medal as she does the driving!

I met up with Mark in the hallway after he returned from his 04:30-06:00 blog & e-mail session. Mark also did some tech work for Duralite as well. We loaded the car with our gear then headed for the buffet breakfast in the hotel. We were joined by our spouses and fellow team members.

We departed the hotel at 0700 for the twenty minute drive to the flying site. Chad had already gone ahead as he was scheduled to fly at about 07:50. We all arrived in plenty of time to help support him and cheer on our team mate. Harry handled all the logistics of picking up the transmitters etc so we had time to relax once our planes were put together.




Chad gets into the mental game.




Things progressed at a steady pace and I was pretty calm for the most part. We watched Chad fly first and then Dez follow with both returning to cheers from the massive (well ok... massive sounding) Canadian contingent!

As my flight time was approaching I tried to concentrate on the elements and went through the sequence numerous times using my Precision Aerobatics Tia Chi .... you know the right hand becomes the airplane and you fly it around the sky kind of routine.

The planes were first checked for correct voltage (see Chad's get checked on left) and when the previous plane landed, Mark packed my airplane over for the sound check. I applied full throttle (with the sound guy watching my every move to ensure compliance!) and I passed the sound test... never did see my db. (94db on pavement is the limit)




It was show time and I quickly went about my business and posted a fairly good first flight. Some in and out for distance but I managed to control it fairly well. Some of my roll rates were inconsistant and I'll work on that next flight. Mark did a great job of calling and has been an incredible help for me on this trip.





We met up with the US squad and had a group picture.




All in all a pretty good start for me and a lot of the "mystery" was quickly removed. I have not seen my scores yet as they are having some issues getting all the data out. I look forward to tomorrows flight.

As both Kelly and I have spent years in pipe bands performing at Remembrance Day services, we are remembering those who have made the ultimate sacrafice so we can live in freedom. We understand even more the importance on this day.

Lest we forget.

Round One In The Books

Well it's been 14 months since the 2007 Team Trials in Victoria and the guys finally took to the skies in Argentina today representing Canada here at the F3A World Championship.

We were greeted to a clear cold morning but once again the winds were blowing 90 degrees into the pilots. Chad was the first Canadian pilot to fly at around 8:00am and although he put in a good flight I'm sure he'll agree that there were a couple of elements that he wish he could have back. No worries as we all know how Chad seems to turn it on strong after day one and will step it up.


Dezso was next up and flew a consistent flight as the temperature warmed up and the winds started to decrease a bit. Fellow F3A pilot Xavier Mouraux making his first trip to the worlds was handling the duties of helper for Dezso as well as the photo expert of the team. Here's a photo of Xavier taking a break from behind the lens while he gets ready for Dezso's flight



My good buddy Dave finally reached his goal of flying at the worlds and it really made me proud to stand behind him on the flight line while he flew. I actually had a hard time calling out the maneuvers which Dave and I have down to a couple of words as I got kinda choked up about the experience. Dave flew well in the conditions and did the team proud with his first attempt at this level of competition.


As you can tell on Dave's face he is one happy camper!! The raw scores are a little behind as Chad and Dezso have theirs while Dave hasn't got his yet. I don't know if they are on the net yet as there was some delay in getting the results out.