• F3A - Dennis Travassaros
• Expert - Matthew Bailey
  
• Advanced - Doug Dorrat
  
• Sportsman - Peter Bailey

Why is the Sunscreen So Cold????

Well for those of you that are a bit cluey, you may realise that this weekend we were actually flying at Ballarat. And yes…the sunscreen was very cold!

The weekend started out a bit chilly and windy on the Saturday, but turned amazingly exceptional for the Sunday. Whilst Saturday the temperature was around the 14 degree mark with winds at around 25-30 kph, gustingto 40kph, Sunday was around the 20 degrees and winds around the 10-12 kph mark. Exceptional!

The club was an excellent host as usual and put on an amazing lunch for all of us and kept the soft drinks and coffee flowing. A huge thank you to all of them.

You can find the results to the competition below, so I will focus more on the outtakes of the weekend. And I have to say that we had quite a few.

The weather was perfect for the gliding spiders. As in previous years, these little gliding spiders will spin their web and let the wind pick them up through the air. Unfortunately, they tend to get tangled up in whatever stands any taller than the ground. Therefore, we found ourselves all covered in spider webs and with little spiders crawling all over us. In the course of the onslaught we found out that Ted Knowles is afraid of spiders. And it appeared that they all knew and decided to land on him! So with a long straw and some skilful handy work we made sure that Ted felt that even more had landed on his neck. He then caught me red-handed!

When Will Crossman came down from his second flight (and note that it was a strong wind blowing in) one of the judges (Ron Schulz) commented on his flight, “Now you simply need to move about 150 metres further out and you will be fine.”

Somehow, John Brann managed to be out of the box in all three directions. How does this work? Well upon exiting his 2 ¼ spins in opposite, he managed to exit over the carpark, which technically means he was out of the box in all three axes!

As Will Crossman was completing his fourth flight, he is climbing to do his stall turn, when suddenly from the crowd we hear Norm Morrish yell out, “HOLY SHIT!” He was amazed at the strength and speed at which the wind was blowing the model away. Norm is very enthusiastic when it comes to flying.

In the midst of his flight, Rob Clarke turns around to his caller Matt Bailey and asks him, “Is it supposed to be inverted?” Matt replied, “No.” Rob had missed a full roll in a manoeuvre and did a half roll instead. He had already flown three manoeuvres around the wrong side up! When he landed he turned around to the judges and said, “My caller told me to do one thing and I defied him!”

On Sunday, as opposed to what was happening on Saturday, we were getting blown out. After a turnaround manoeuvre at the left side of the field, John Brann ended up heading towards Apollo Bay. In order to straighten himself out, he pointed the aircraft north and flew it back to where the 150 metre line sat and did a sharp 90 degree turn. From the crowd we once again heard Norm, “Well that’s one way to adjust!”

Another pilot ran into trouble flying his Figure M and ended up having to recover his aircraft through a series of very sharp pulls and pushes. From the crowd we heard Tom Bloodworth yell, “Good thing it has a strong wing spar!”

Bobby Hurst landed his highly customised electric Excelleron 90. The electric motor seemed to continue to spin at what would have been considered a high idle. Bobby called out to his helper and says, “Oh, look…the motor is stuck!” He looks down at his transmitter, flicks down the throttle trim, the motor stops and he says, “OK, got it…”

To close off, our main loud, crowd commentator (yes, you got it…Normy) took off with his brand, spanking new electric Azurit, into the wind. Well he forgot to do his free pass, didn’t he!? He got straight into business (he must have been in a hurry…). Halfway through his flight, when he realised he was doing the manoeuvres in the opposite direction to what he had planned, he turns around to his caller (Bobby) and says, “We went too early!”

The weekend was plagued by some very interesting instances of brain fade, digital palsy, senior’s moments; you name it. Unfortunately, we would have needed to film it to share it so that you could appreciate it. The bottom line is that the weekend was filled with very funny moments, good spirit and a lot of fun. Mostly though, we did a lot of flying and we all enjoyed it very much.

Full Results in pdf format HERE (right click to download and keep)

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