Flying Reports

Sunday Flying Report

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:11:55 -0500

Dave Quist: Emily, Ted and I showed up about 12:30 and setup on field G. Wind was heading south and was gusty. I was using my short High Start (about 130 feet) and was getting higher launches than when I had it setup with 550 feet. Ted had fun chasing butterflies and chased the Vulture on landing once. I tried to let Emily fly but was too low most of the time. I never got it quite high enough to really let her fly it. Every time I thought I was getting the Vulture high enough (600-800 feet), all of a sudden I would be in a down draft and lost half my height in about 2 seconds. And then it was virtually impossible to find were it went. It was extremely bumpy and found myself focusing on the plane as the conditions were so dynamic.
It was a great day to get out.
Dave Q

May TD Contest

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:24:41 -0500

Robert Samuels: Hi Flyers: What a great day at the field!!!   There were 13 of us (I think) ... 10 in Unlimited and 5 in RES. The weather could not have been lovelier. Mild temperature, light overcast and no wind. Not just liight, no wind. The lift was there to be had if you could fly smoothly.
I did ok time wise but my landings could use a bit more work. I was ok until I came in hot and flopped my plane over for a 0 landing. Oh, well.
Chris did a lot better than he has in the recent past. He moved up to second place. Good going Chris. We expect you will get better when you have some more flying experience. Li'l Wayne was perfect every round. The Prez was just waiting in the wings for me to stumble so he could jump into 3rd.
The real hero of the day, as usual, was Mark M. Winches and batteries and turnarounds ... Oh MY!!!!    Linebreak fixes, battery switch outs, backlash untangles on a continuous basis. Then, after all the fun is over he loads all that stuff while we load our planes and scoot. And he flies competitively in his spare minutes.
Art and Nelson showed why they are the guys to learn from. I know I still have a lot they can teach me.   But I'm a slow learner.   Rich continued his hot streak with a solid 2nd today.
One guy who is a stealth flier is Big Wayne (60 #s less big these days). His landings, like mine, are not the greatest but his thermalling ability is very, very good. Wayne has always been a good flier and I think he is getting better each outing. I would not be surprised to see him burying me soon.
That's all I can think of now. I've had something to eat, a glass of wine (or two or three or). I need a nap!!!
El Roberto

Final Standings (click on Unlimited or RES for full scores)

Unlimited
Wayne Geffon
Chris Lee
Mike Johnson
Robert Samuels
Glauco Lago
Adam Quennoz
Mark Miller
Wayne Wimbish
Nelson Itterly
Art Frost
RES
Art Frost
Rich Rennecamp
Nelson Itterly
Ed Rau
Gene Lindsay
Mark Miller

The often discussed but seldom seen “zero lift” condition. Five minutes with hardly any altitude change. Chris’ round 6 flight, the sudden increase at the end of the flight was when he finally gave in and poached air Adam had found.

BBQ at Forest Park

Tue, 8 May 2012 19:26:28 -0500

Glauco Lago: Such a nice day today so I thought why not going to Forest park during lunch for some soaring?
Not truth actually. Due to pure jealous from Nelson’s cheater I’ve been building my own cheater. Not really to thermal but to practice F3B speed and maybe distance without a winch. So I got this Chinese slope moldie that has an electric fuse and have been putting it together slowly but today was supposed to be the maiden.
Chris that said his fingers are useless during this slump volunteered to maybe lose one or two holding a powerful and untested setup. Well, he really wanted to stay far away taking pictures with the biggest zoom but after I attempted twice to make a 103 oz 2.9 meter plane to float out of a hand launch, he joined the pain.
His throw was much better than mine and the plane floated for about 10 ft. But after the long walk to retrieve the plane one flap and one aileron stuck all the way down which is really bad. Could be worse like smoking coming out the canopy…wait, there is smoking coming out of the canopy so I unplugged the 4 cell lipo and took it out of the nose.
Well, still unsure what happened but it seems the CC Bec overheated and melted a few wires. Instead of using the BEC that came with the speed controller, I opted for a separate BEC. Now I’ll just put a 4 cell battery pack for the RX and see how it goes.
Considering nothing else toasted, I’ll attempt another flight latter this week…beware.
Glauco

OVSS #1 Misty Meadows

Sun, 6 May 2012 10:44:13 -0500

Saturday

Adam Quennoz: Two rounds down. Chris and Mike are sitting 1 and 2. Due to a bad landing I'm sitting in 6th but moving up. Chris is on the money with two perfect rounds. Mike is 10 points behind.
The weather is cloudy, breezy and warm. Lift is pretty good but still requires finess.
One fatality. Jack Strothers had a fuse failure which resulted in his beautiful Aspire to impact Terry's metal barn. Absolutely destroyed. Photo attached.
I've also attached some pics of Chris practicing on Friday.
AdamQ

Adam Quennoz: Round five just starting. 3 of 5 positions in the top group are MVSA.

Adam Quennoz: MVSA clinches top three places of day 1. 1st Mike Johnson, 2nd Adam Quennoz, 3rd Chris Lee.

Mike “Show Me The Money” Johnson with his winnings after Day 1.  No joke, a cash prize was handed out for places 1-5 each day.

Chris Lee: Well, you guys already know the end result of Day 1 of the Misty Meadows contest in Solon, Iowa. But here's how it all went down.
Terry Edmonds, who's backyard we were flying out of, started off the pilot's meeting by saying "Welcome to the Misty Meadows Contest. You can see why we call it that," gesturing to the low cloud base and full overcast conditions. The wind was already puffing a bit too.
First round started at 9:30 with an 8-minute task time. Lots of surfing and very little turning was the best tact. Terry's field, and the surrounding terrain, is quite undulating, with sloping fields, tree lines and a series of interconnected lakes all within gliding distance. In the first group up, I found what appeared to be a high ridge of lift, or a standing wave, in the SE corner. I think I made one circle the entire flight. Pushing out further and running left and right across this area of lift seemed to be working.
Times were truncated to the whole second, which worked in my favor as I landed at 8:00.91 according to my timer, Adam. I also managed a 100 on the old-style Nats tape that we were using. The tape uses 4-points per interval, so 100-96-92-etc and there's about 1ft per interval, so quite generous.
My second flight was much the same, except I searched a bit more along the eastern edge and to the NE when my initial attempt at the SE again didn't pan out. Task time had been increased to 10 minutes, where it remained for the remainder of the day. I finished with a 10:00 and a 100. We all know what that means. Only one way to go after starting a contest like this... down.
As the live reporting indicated, Mike was a close second going into the third round with near perfect scores himself. I don't remember the flight much so I guess it was pretty uneventful, but I remember Mike having to scratch at the end. He was making low-level turns right at the end of the time slot and I made a high base-turn to give him plenty of clearance. This put me out of sorts for final as I came in too hot and wobbly. Despite the aforementioned generous tapes, I only got an 84 on landing (but still right on time.) This helped him close the gap a little and I think he trailed by 6 points going into Round 4. Little did I know, this small margin would not matter.

In Round 4, I held that 6-point lead, and Mike Johnson and Mike Fox (the CD for the contest) were tied for second. We had taken a break for lunch at noon and when we resumed, the cloud cover had completely dissipated until we were left with clear blue skies. The lift was starting to cycle, and so was the sink.
I came off the line and immediately was not in happy air. I started making a crosswind run to the SE, then reversed to the NE, then back again, I think. I'm as confused now in my recollection as I remember being then. The wind was blowing pretty steady, maybe 8mph on the ground, and I wasn't getting a tell-tale shift that might indicate a nearby thermal. I was starting to get desperate (okay, I had been in desperation mode for a minute already without realizing it) and headed downwind back towards the field. I made one last cut crosswind just so I wasn't flying directly overhead when I hit a bump. I turned immediately and the first turn didn't gain me any altitude, but it was in stark contrast to the sink I had been in. I stuck with it as I felt the air calm and start to get warm where we were standing. My low-level turns were maintaining very good energy and I had a fair bit of confidence that I could pull this out. I could see a couple other planes were scrambling looking for this piece of air but I thought I had the best of it. There was one plane higher than me and a bit downwind, but I figured we were in the same column.
I really tried to focus as the planes came overhead and Adam, my timer, even noted when the wind started to gust again filling in behind the thermal just as my plane passed overhead. It's always tricky trying to work lift directly overhead, the perspective keeps changing and I lost the track that the thermal was following. I think it might have actually changed direction a little, wrapping around Terry's house at the top of the hill (we were practically standing on his back patio flying). In any case, I extended a bit in the wrong direction and quickly discovered just how small the thermal core was down low.

You can see exactly where I lost the thermal core (nice concentric circles that end abruptly) as it passed over the house and where we were standing. The altimeter graph shows that I picked it back up on the other side of the trees and power lines before giving up and heading home.

Now it was time for a mad scramble because I didn't have a lot of altitude to experiment with, I was probably at 30' and moving further downwind not in lift. I tried to reacquire the one piece of lift I knew existed out there, taking quick glances at my wind streamer as the rush of air was still filling in behind the thermal. I think I caught bits and pieces of it as it went over all the parked cars, then I was at the field boundary, a road lined with trees and a power line. I took another wrap and thought I caught a corner of the lift so I tried another, extending it out to the north. But the back side of the turn wouldn't hold together, and I lost a bit more altitude. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plane or two coming in to land and realized that most people were going to be down soon anyway, I better get some landing points. Then I realized, never mind landing points, let's just keep it out of the trees and maybe make the field boundary!
I'll need to confirm by looking at the GPS, but I'm pretty sure I started out on the back side of the two-tiered power lines; I kept bobbling the plane up when I thought I was getting close in hopes of clearing it. At some point I did clear it, and then it was a matter of missing the trees. I was able to relax a little once I passed in front of one of the trees and my plane didn't get hung up in it. The next step was just not to have to walk too far to retrieve the plane. I got down into ground effect and skipped around the car lot. At this point, I started allowing myself to wonder if I could make the tape. From some practice flying yesterday, I knew the ground sloped gently from the cars to the landing zone and there could be some buoyancy gained working that slope. So I just kept the nose pointed and tried to keep the speed constant, not letting it balloon up or dip down. And the plane just kept on coming, right to a 100 landing.
It felt like quite a save, except for the part where I didn't actually save the flight. Mike, who I think was the higher plane when I started working my low level thermal, and one other plane were still up. The other guy landed shortly thereafter. But Mike didn't seem interested in doing that. He took that piece of lift downwind a short stretch then came back over the landing tapes and the adjacent pond at 40' or so and promptly took the next little bubble back out again. It seemed like he did this a hundred times, in slow motion, driving a dagger into all the rest of us deeper and deeper. He stretched an additional three minutes out of his flight, despite his timer, Steve Stohr, imploring him to not risk landing points and to come in and land.
I dropped from first place to barely clinging to a spot in the top group (5th), everyone else in the group got wiped out and never reappeared in the top group. It was a wholesale replacement as the second group came up to try and challenge Mike.

Practice flying on the bungee before the contest.

We flew two more rounds and I climbed a spot in each round, but never got any closer to Mike as he continued to fly flawless. We made him work in the last round but he proved his mettle, fighting a headwind with his Pike Perfect ET SL to get back to the field from a downwind run.
I hit another 10:00/100 in Round 5 to move within a handful of Adam, but in the final battle for second place, I blew the landing when a little thermal pulled through just as Adam was landing. My time ended 15 seconds after him because of the staggered launch sequence, just in time for me to catch the violent rush of air following the thermal. I was getting bounced all over on final approach and was just happy to breathe a sigh of relief when I got the plane down. Too bad it was a second early and only a 92.
In the end, I finished 6 points behind Adam, and some 300 points behind Mike, as MVSA swept the top three places of Day 1 of OVSS #1 2012, Misty Meadows.
At least, that's how I remember it. Congrats to Mike on his first LSF Level V win (21 contestants), Day 2 tomorrow!
Chris

Adam Quennoz collects his bus fare to get home after finishing second on Saturday.

Sunday

Mike Johnson: Well we had another beautiful day defying the dire weather predictions. I'll send some pics tonight when I'm home but the 3 of us were in the money both days. Today it was me, Chris, and Adam who got 1st, 3rd and 5th respectively.

Mike Johnson: Wow, what a day. We thought Saturday was exciting. The terrain got the best of many of us today. It didn't help that the nearly downwind row of trees became a strict no fly zone past that edge of the field to stay out of the nearby neighborhood. I did well today but still made mistakes not trusting lift indicators in some of my flights but I luckily made up for those mistakes. One of which that very easily could have thrown me out of the top group was on a launch in round 3 or so when I was first to launch and the wind was picking up just a bit. My launch went very smooth and I got a good zoom - as I was bleeding off speed at the top, my plane kept going and going. It felt like an extra 2 seconds of vertical climb in my zoom. I was telling myself I must have zoomed through a thermal but I didn't trust myself as I didn't want to blindly circle right overhead for a minute or more not knowing if I was climbing only to wind up downwind on the edge of the no fly zone possibly below launch height. I instead went straight upwind. It was no good up there. Having left the possible good air on launch there was nothing but sink upwind. I quickly lost a lot of altitude. I gave up one area and headed to the other upwind corner of the field and caught something fairly low - enough to circle in and climb. I don't remember the whole flight but I got enough to make my time. There were a few low saves that were a lot of fun. Often it was just a little extra comfort altitude to make my last couple minutes less stressful but in that air you never knew what was going to happen. The varying winds made landings real tough to nail today. I came a few seconds early or late several times.
You can see from the pictures the terrain that we dealt with this weekend. The 6 winches were spaced between a house and a pond. The landing tapes were in the backyard that began sloping towards the pond at the last couple winches. My first thought was this was going to be hazardous but it was a lot of fun and a great experience.
Mike

 

 Chris Lee: Who knew that losing could be so much fun? On the way home, I realized I’m happily settling into third-place mediocrity. That’s four contests in a row where I’ve finished third, for those scoring at home. I feel like I’m just going now to make sure contests get 20 contestants and qualify as LSF Level V wins. :)
Terry Edmonds made the point that I would have done pretty well on Saturday, “if you hadn’t brought your buddies.” But that’s what made this weekend so much fun! Watching MVSA sweep the top three spots on Saturday, then have all three members take a turn on the “rabbit winch” as the points leader on Sunday was terrific.
While it looks like I don’t even have to leave town to get third place any more, I still need to travel to places like Solon, Iowa to get a whirlwind tour of varying weather conditions. We again had overcast conditions to start the day, but this time with an imminent threat of rain as a storm system brewed to the west. Mike Fox, the CD, made a push to expedite the contest to ensure we at least got the minimum rounds in by calling for 7’s for the first three rounds.
Winds were light for the first couple of rounds, and while there was rarely anything strong enough to make continual circles in, there was a general floatiness to the air as many people made the relatively short 7-minute task just slowly descending while S-ing in the buoyant areas.
I was in the lead starting Round 3, but Adam noted there were only 10 points separating 1st-4th place. While on tow, I glanced upon three or four little black birds directly overhead flitting about. I had my timer, Wayne Messner, keep an eye on them and he confirmed that they appeared to be feeding on insects. I immediately turned and headed downwind after the zoom, even though to that point everyone had been making their time on the upwind side.
It was soft air and I maintained going back with it, eventually sliding to the south where I found more sustaining lift to make the time. I was pretty happy with my read and making it work, even though everyone else went upwind and made their times also.
Things were setting up nicely on approach, I pumped the flaps briefly to bring my speed down but I got distracted in the final seconds. My plane was on the ground before I knew what happened. One moment I was tracking right to the target with good speed, three feet off the ground like usual, and the next moment I was stalled and belly flopping well short for a 56 landing (which is a long ways away on these generous tapes.) It turns out, I had not completely retracted the flaps when I reduced speed, and the 4 or 5mm of flap deployment rapidly zapped all the energy from the plane.
That one mistake pretty much ended my chances as a contender, given the caliber of pilots I was up against. Just like the day before, I plummeted from 1st to 5th place in one swift move. Fortunately, the point differential wasn’t so great this time, and just like the day before, I climbed a spot with each remaining round.
In another parallel to the day before, we took a lunch break and emerged to find that the low clouds had cleared out (still a high overcast sky) only to be replaced by wind! With an official contest in the books at three rounds, Mike increased the task to 10, followed by 12 and a finishing task of 10 minutes. It was time for make-or-break.

Practice flying on the bungee before the contest.

We were challenged in Round 4 as everyone went upwind and we all came back together clinging to the same cycle of air at varying altitudes. For the first time all day, someone in the top group missed time as Guy Russo dropped out early. With sloping terrain over most of the flying field, the one flat spot, over Terry’s backyard pond, seemed to provide a wind shadow or something and several of us revisited this area to take small thermals to sustain.
The wind picked up even more in Round 5 and it began to feel like anyone’s game. I put in some ballast, and I think Adam did as well. I wanted to feel comfortable kicking in camber to hang in the wind without being blown backwards, and my timer Jerry Gross reinforced the decision by further suggesting some ballast would help settle the plane down in the rowdy landing zone. I had a theory about locating some wave lift and got the opportunity to try it out in this round. We were launching east and Terry’s house is located at the top of a gentle hill that extends even further east to the next property. The wind was a little bit cross from the south, and my thought was that the wind was compressing air against the slope, creating a lift band right at the top of the hill.
Most of the group started out front and a bit to the south in an area that had worked off and on over the weekend while I headed straight out to the east riding the top of the gentle ridge. Everyone was pointed into the wind, no circling going on, when, as a single unit, all four planes converged on my location. None of us had been climbing, but they all clearly were sinking out faster than I was. I don’t know if my theory was actually accurate, or if I just lucked into a thermal cycle, but it worked this time, for a little while. The air did eventually come apart, sucking Adam and Mike McGlothlin Jr. down with it but three of us made our 12s.
One unanticipated consequence of carrying ballast: it’s great for penetrating a rowdy LZ in windy conditions, but what happens when a thermal is sitting right overhead, bringing the headwind to a zero? I found out during my landing approach as I suddenly had way too much altitude and energy for the zero-wind situation. I felt lucky to get an 88 with such a sloppy landing but those little points here and there would come back to bite me in the end.

On the final round, I tried separating from the group; even as everyone climbed in the SE corner, I tried heading NE. My thought was that if their air came apart, I might be the only one left standing. From third place, it didn’t make any sense trying to cover the leaders, I couldn’t make up any ground if we all went up and came down together. It mattered little as our two leaders made time with relative ease; Mike Johnson left the door open with a slightly-less-than-perfect 96 and Mike Fox followed right up with a 100, leaving us with a photo-finish.
In the awards ceremony, it was revealed that Mike Fox scored 6540.61 and Mike Johnson finished at... 6540........74 to win by 0.13 points! My calls for “one more round” went unheeded and I think everyone was okay with that. We got 12 solid rounds in for the weekend and saw all types of weather, encountered various terrain (with some having closer encounters than preferred), and experienced the fun and camaraderie that is flying in the Ohio Valley Soaring Series. It was a terrific way to see the EISS Misty Meadows contest introduced to the OVSS. Don’t worry Terry, I’ll be bringing my buddies back next year!
Chris

Results from OVSS #1 EISS Misty Meadows at Solon, Iowa.
Track the OVSS Standings over the course of the season here.

Fults Hill Search For The Sloper

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:09:21 -0500

Ken Trudeau: Congrats Mike on the move and the new position in Red Bud. It is beautiful in that area. I spent the day driving down many country roads in that area. Then stopped in the small town of Fults and took many pics. Did some FPV out of the Park in Fults over to Fults Hill. I ended up flying my Tricopter today, but was checking on the idea of flying my Electric FPV Scout Bee wing out of the park. I would not see it being a problem for you to fly out of the Park with the Radian. The corn is about 6" high right now on the edges of the field.

Two weeks ago Chris M. and I were flying at Fults. We had been flying for some time and winds were great. Chris said something about racing, the next thing we were cruising back and forth at high speeds racing against each other. I was making my turn back to the West with my Thunderstorm, Chris was coming up on me. We hit, and I could see my planes wing was cocked (one of the wing bolts were broken) my left aileron was fluttering. Chris was forced into the hill East of the peak. I landed out in front of the hill, in the mud of the Bob's farm, with wing detached. Chris and I spent over an hour searching for his plane. It was never found.

I had been wanting to FPV Fults for some time. Today I spent the time using the Tricopter searching for his plane. Came back home and have been watching my Go Pro video's for the past couple hours.

FPV Fults Hill..search for a sloper and have some fun also:)
I started the Tricopter in a parking lot and right off the bat, kicked up a rock. Chipped the prop....got jello :(

Possible location of Chris’ plane.