NeuCastle Cup - Open Race Day 1

Hello Race Fans,
I know you are getting tired of hearing it, but today was another long day.  Today was the start of the NeuCastle Cup.  This is a F5D race open to anyone who wants to enter.  For the world championship participants, it is a chance to test run their equipment in real race conditions with two other competitors on the race course.  There are 32 competitors.

The weather today began slightly showery in the morning but the clouds soon went away and the day was 30 degrees with no wind.  The humidity was tolerable.  I feel the heat is having an effect on the race times we are used to in Calgary.  Today many competitors had trouble getting their race times below 60 seconds.  Only the top seven pilots were under 60 seconds.

We flew four rounds today and will fly five rounds tomorrow.  After four rounds the leader is Gunther Mayr of Austria. Second is Nick Vaes of Belgium.  Third is Dirk Belting of Germany.  Fast time for today is 54.49 seconds held by Darron Rodrigues of the UK.  Marcel Schlage of Switzerland, the fellow with the bumpy whale fin technology in his propellor, was fast today and finished fourth on the day with a time of 57.69.

For Canada, I finished the day in ninth place, Delbert is sitting at 15th and Roy is 31st.   I posted 62's, 63, and 66.   Delbert flew some 62's, and 65's.  Roy had a rough day with three flights resulting in 200 points from double cuts in three races out of four.  Roy did put in one flight at 68.  After tomorrow's five rounds we will be allowed to drop our two highest scores.  This will shift the final results quite a bit.   I have posted a photo of the score card.

The race administration had their challenges today with the race course equipment and the pylon judges themselves.  A few electrical and mechanical issues were resolved by Tom Scott.  Mike Tallman had his hands full at pylon #1 with a crew of judges that had never worked in pylon #1 as judges before.  Ed Smith and Mike Deneve spent their [hot] day on the start line trying to get us all organized at the start and launching in proper order.  There were a few problems that resulted in a five or six re-flys during the day.   However all in all, the judges and helpers did a good job.   It is good that we are having the NeuCastle Cup Open competition prior to the world championships.  This competition allows everyone, including the judges and administration a chance to work the bugs out of their system.  I'm sure things will run more smoothly tomorrow and by the time we get to the world championships, all will be sorted out.

Team USA had their challenges today.  Travis flew well but cut in a couple of races.  Danny nearly crashed on takeoff in his first race as we were launching out of the back of the course and had to make a sharp left turn during throttle up.  This gave Danny some over rotation to the left and nearly crashed.  In another race, Danny nearly had a mid-air collision on takeoff and lost track of his plane during the mix up.  Dan had to recover his model and get it back on the course.  This put him significantly behind in this race.  Troy Peterson, the third member of the USA team, did not compete in today's race as he is recovering from a hernia operation just days ago.  He might show up tomorrow.

We packed up about 7:00pm and headed to the Olive Garden, Roy's favor soup and salad joint.  It's now midnight and Team Canada is up in heats #1, 2, and 3 first thing tomorrow morning.   Nighty-nite all.



Randy