Day 3 of the world championships is completed.
It was a pressure packed day of racing. One thing we know for sure, the individual world champion is pretty much decided. Gunther Mayr of Austria posted two world record times today. His fastest time and new world record is 55.89 seconds. Gunther, only 19 years old, is clearly in first place. It's a close race for the other positions.
Today the wind moved 45 degrees downwind so we flew all rounds today with the takeoff going out of the back of the course between pylons #2 and #3. The race timers do not start the clock until the airplanes pass over the start/finish line. In this takeoff configuration, this results in faster 10 lap times because the planes are mostly up to speed when the clock starts and we head towards pylon #1.
Team Canada flew very consistently today. Delbert flew two 61's a 60 and a 63. Delbert moved ahead of me in the individual standings. Delbert is flying his own homemade propellors and getting almost total run time for ten laps. His motor would limit out on the watts around pylon #2 on the last lap.
My strategy was to stay calm, cool, and collected. We don't want any cuts. I flew two 62's, a 63, and a 61. I'm using carbon props from Mike Hazel of ZZprop. I found myself a little nervous today as I was feeling the pressure of team Canada sitting in second place and we don't want to make any mistakes.
Roy was flying well and a little conservative. At this point we want to maintain our high team standing. Roy flew a 62, 64, 65, and a 66 with one cut at pylon #3. Roy is flying Mike Hazel props as well.
 |
| Randy Bridge (caller) and Travis Flynn of Team USA |
Team USA was flying well today. They really put it together and climbed the standings. Danny Kane is flying well. Danny currently sits in 5th place after 11 rounds. Travis finished all his flights today under power so he posted some better times than in previous days where he was forced to take the Super Cut. Troy had a good setup that allowed him to complete his races under power as well. Team USA flew well as a team and benefited from a serious mistake by Team Switzerland. Carsten Garth of Switzerland posted a 200 score today and the team must now carry that penalty. This moved team USA into third behind Canada.
After the second worst score was dropped, Marcel Schlage of Switzerland moved back up. Marcel also posted some sub-60 times today with the 'sawtooth' propellor. Dirk Belting of Germany also moved into the top ten today with his own performance coming on strong in the latter part of the contest. With all these guys moving up, and I didn't have any high times to drop, I moved down to 7th position. You can now understand the pressure I was feeling ALL day.
 |
| Carsten Garth and Christian Hanke of Switzerland |
So here are the top results
Team Standings after 11 rounds
1. Austria 1673
2. Canada 1707
3. USA 1727
4. Switzerland 1736
Individual Standings after 11 rounds
1. Gunther Mayr
2. Daniel Mayr
3. Marcel Schlage
4. Delbert Godon
5. Dirk Belting
6. Danny Kane
7. Randy Smith
13. Roy Andrassy
Complete results in the attached photos.
Today I shot a video of the first race of the morning. This video is of Carsten Garth of Switzerland, Delbert of Canada, and Travis Flynn of the USA. This will give you a good idea of the race start procedure, takeoff through the back of the course and the race itself. You can really only see the models briefly as they enter pylon #2 but you get the idea. The sound of the models is pretty cool too. See the video at this link:
So tomorrow we finish the contest with three final rounds. Anything can happen. Team Canada is just staying cool and continuing to do what got us this far. Not sure when the blog post will occur tomorrow. There's likely to be some celebrating going on. Type to you tomorrow.
Randy
Right on Boys! Hang in there!
ReplyDeleteMurray
You guys are doing great, keep it up!
ReplyDelete