F5D Practice Day 2

Team USA (Danny and Travis) - Troy Peterson did not show today

Today was another good day of practice.  Most everyone has showed up for practice now.  Danny and Travis from the USA team arrived today with a number of their Batleth models.  Travis put up a blistering flight for 8-1/4 laps before his watt limiter shut him down.   Hmmm, must select new prop and battery setup.  Danny was flying well and finishing 10 laps.  Troy Peterson, the third member of their team did not show today.

Team Canada put up several more test flights today.   The weather began to get quite a bit warmer from morning to afternoon.  My 10 lap times slowed by two or three seconds today.   I think Roy and Delbert found the same effect on their models.  So we just tried to fly the tightest course we could and play with a few different props.  Nothing seemed to get us much below 59 seconds.

Marcel Schlage from Switzerland is the fellow with the incredible saw tooth propellor.  Hank sent me a link and surprisingly, this is patented Canadian technology for wind turbines known as Tubercle technology.   I filmed a video of one of Marcel's practice flights.   You can see it on Youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU7gaGXnItc
The sound is quite amazing.   Sorry for the quality of the video.   I'm just using my simple point and shoot digi-cam.

A more conventional and typical F5D flight was also filmed.   I can't remember which team this was but you can see a pretty typical flight here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpIzzrS71Ao

Strange Bird from Austria -- Daniel Mayr Pilot

Daniel Mayr from Austria also displayed and interesting piece of model technology.  He was flying a very high tech wing and fuselage design from Austria [I think]. The nose moment was very long and it sported a flying stabilizer.  It had very small ailerons and did fly very fast.  Daniel fussed quite a bit over the plane in somewhat of a perfectionist manner.  Attention to detail seemed very important.  I've posted a photo of Daniel's plane.


Pete Bergstrom, Ed Smith, and Mike Tallman set up the lap counting and turn signalling system today.  Everything seems to be working well.  We have been using the Jim Smith "Dog Dish" single turn light for practice and it has come in very handy.  We are dialling ourselves in.   It is surprising to sit out near #1 pylon and watch other teams flying.   Many pilots often turn short of #1 pylon and think they are going fast.

Russian Remains...

There was only one mishap today.  One of the pilots from Russia had a failure of some sort shortly after his turn at pylon #1.   The plane nose dived straight into the ground.  Shortly afterwards, smoke was seen rising from the crash site.  Pete rushed out with a fire extinguisher but it was too late to save the contents of what was, just a few minutes prior, a nice model.


Tomorrow is Day 1 of the NeuCastle Cup.  This is a competition open to anyone with a F5D model.  You do not have to qualify for the world championships to fly.  Most everyone from the world competition is flying plus a few extras from the USA who did not qualify for the worlds.   This will be the real test of pilots and judges so we'll see how things shake out.


Another long day at the field.  It was a good day but I'm tired.  We need to be up at 6:30am tomorrow as first heat takes off tomorrow at 9:00am.


Cheers,






Randy