Arrived at the diggers rest field to blue skies light North-Easterly winds, and me hoping we'd finally have a day of low f5j launches and the tactics that accompany them. I was concerned about daylight savings having kicked in that morning and people running late, but 11 starters and several spectators, were ready to go by the time i had arrived.

Unfortunatly Graham had technical issues with the plane he'd been fixing up late the previous night, as did Norm Ripp, so they both dropped out early.

Mak Kroger had once again came along to help out on the day, so i could run 2 heats per round, which also meant for a busy day of eight rounds ahead.

By lunch time there was a big storm front developing to the North and the sky had heavily clouded over, with a 180 degree switch in the wind and now a medium strength wind blowing. So a change of tactics and most ballasted up and went for conservative launches closer to 150 or more metres.

As the afternoon wore on and with luck on our side the storms slipped past with only the odd drop of water here and there, and with the departing storm front the winds abated as well. So as the afternoon wore on, with the sky still cloudy, we encountered soft lift conditions. Occasionally someone would gamble on a lower launch, but it just didn't pay off, so the launches remained conservative, but were slowly getting lower again. Surprisingly I managed to spec out on my last flight, so there was still good air to be found late in the day.  

Congratulations to:

1st Marcus Stent

2nd Jim Houdalakis

3rd David Milward

Thanks to Dave from Dave's Toys for Big Boys for sponsoring first place with a flight battery pack prize.

Thanks to the VMAA for providing the trophies.

And thanks to everyone who helped setup, pack up and enter scores, making my job easier.

 overall_results_f5j_state_champs_2018.pdf

 flight_scores_f5j_state_champs_2018.pdf

See you in Wentworth next week,

regards Jim H.

Competitors

Jim Houdalakis 2nd, Marcus Stent 1st, David Milward 3rd 

Marcus and Stork

Dave Pratley presenting prize

Max and Gary

Z and Alan

Dave Pratley and Bob

Hugh and Marcus

David Milward

Sunday saw the start to our Victorian competition gliding season after a 2 1/2 month winter break.

We had 6 starters  for F5J electric launch glider, and a few apologies from people who wished they could've attended.. 

The conditions were cool, with about a 20 ish kph westerly all day and gusting to a bit more on occasion, with a mostly overcast sky.

The cycles were pretty far apart for most of the day, with the occasional strong lift cyle coming through, so you had to be on the ball, 

because it was very easy to miss the boat at catching a core. Trying to catch up to someone already in a core usually meant ending up with not enough height to come back.

The gusty conditions made a mess of a lot of landings, and caused quite a few >75metre out landings with zero score, and some very long walks into adjacent paddocks, to retrieve planes.

In fact there was one heat mid-day where everyone landed out and got a zero. 

It was also pleasing to see blast from the past at the event, in Max Kroger, who, even though didn't compete this time , is keen the get back into the swing of things,

and I have to thank for hanging around and helping as a spare time keeper and caller.

As usual consistency won out and congratulation go to :

Hugh Blackburn 1st

Dave Milward 2nd

Jim Houdalakis 3rd 

 f5jflightscoresrcgasept18.pdf

 f5j Overall Results RCGA Sept18.pdf

see you at the next one,

JimH

The annual F5J at VARMS saw a good turn out with 10 pilots competing. The 1pm start time and good weather saw a few new/old faces turn out for a fun afternoon. With westerly breezes there was not much space to chase thermals downwind, but good lift could be found in the North West and South. In the end the consistent pilots took out the places.

Congratulations to

1st Marcus Stent

2nd Hugh Blackburn

3rd Bob Wilson

 varms_flight_scores.pdf

 varms_overall.pdf

- Bruce Clapperton

Being one of the four team trials, the F5J at Milang South Australia was well attended, with flyers coming in from all over the country plus a strong contingent from New Zealand, and Matt via Dubai.

Also a few flyers were having a go of electrics, after a lifetime of only winch launching. So a good turnout all in all.

Conditions were ideal with warm temps, and light winds and any gusting was typically thermal activity, and got stronger as the day went on.

The format was interesting with the organizers allocating teams of 3 per round, per lane, with a timer allocated to a pilot.

So you got to mix with a lot of other pilots which made it more interesting. It felt like I was on my feet all day and I was really knackered by the end of the day, but it was a lot of fun none the less.

We flew half of the Saturday, with a swap to f3j after lunch.We didn't have a fly off in f5j, so final standings were:

1st Joe Wurts

2nd Kevin Botherway

3rd Andrew Meyer

Since this was also team trial #1 the top 3 Aussie pilots that nominated were

Andrew Meyer

Marcus Stent

Nick Chabrel

f5j international 2018 - overall results r1-r12.xls

 f5j international 2018 - team trial 1.xls

regards

JimH