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2014 DARTS
Unlimited Contest
Sunday
July 20, 2014 |
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Twin Towers Area Park, Fairborn, Ohio
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Sponsored by the DARTS (Dayton
ARea Thermal Soarers)
Who: Any AMA member, spectators welcome
What: Unlimited Contest
When: Sunday July 20,
2014
Winch Masters show at
8:15 AM, have winches set up by 8:45 AM
Pilot's meeting at
8:45 AM
First round starts
9:00 AM
Where: Club Field, Twin Towers Area Park, Fairborn, OH
Type: Woody Contest, see special Woody rules below
Event details: AMA flight rules
landing tapes: not sure what was
used ???
Seeded Man on Man format for flight groups
Flight scores normalized, then landing scores added
Contest Director: Skye Malcom
Pre Contest note:
I'll be CD'ing the winch launch, unlimited class
(anything with a tow hook) contest at the DARTS field
this Sunday. The NATS are coming up so let's try to
simulate that early morning dead air by getting the
winches there and set up before an 8:45 pilots meeting
and first flight group launching by 9:00 AM.
Skye
Post Contest results:
Well we had questionable conditions as we got to Twin
Towers this morning. Fog, mist, soaking wet grass were
greeting us as we set up the winches. Some tentative
test launches were made and the planes disappeared into
the mist of a 400 foot ceiling. It pushed us to delay
the contest until 10:30.
With 8 contestants we had two flight groups of 4 pilots
each. Everyone timed and flew and shagged chutes so we
kept pretty busy throughout the day. Based on some
temporary optimism on my test flight I figured we'd be
OK with a 13 minute task all day. Because of that
duration it did slow down our progress through the
rounds but in the end 6 rounds were made by all 8 of us
without serious mishap or damage to plane or person.
Somewhere in the 1 to 2 pm hour we actually saw blue sky
and then the sun actually shone down upon us. Sort of a
shocker and in fact the wind picked up a skosh and the
feeds became stronger but the sink strengthened as well.
It was easy to miss out on the thermal, or more
correctly, thermals. When you fly 13 minutes it's often
the case you need to find a second thermal to make your
time. Finally after 6 rounds only one of us maxed each
round, that person being David Wrinkle. Here are the
final scores:
1
David Wrinkle
6513.44
2
Jerry Shape
6420.04
3
Norm Poti
6187.31
4
Ron Mong
5943.43
5
Skye Malcolm 5925.68
6
Mark Groves
5127.71
7
Albert Salas
3424.76
8
Ken Davidson 3008.10
All in all I think we all learned something. For
instance I learned you can launch an Aspire pointed in
the right direction to the feed of the lift and only
make a 6 minute flight when everybody else in the flight
group did the same thing except the 6 minute part.
Oops! But on the flip side I was able to get this
plane up in the air and got a little bit of tuning going
on so hopefully it will be a good back up should I need
later at the NATS or one of the OVSS contests later in
the season.
I really want to thank everyone for coming out, setting
up the winches, shagging chutes, and just being great
sports about the whole day. Once again, Albie made the
trophies and they look great. -
Skye (6 minute) Malcolm
Here are the pictures of the winners
click on the thumbnails to view the full-size high
resolution pictures
(no other "airplane" pictures submitted)
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