Rugan 2012 World Championship - Day 1

Looks like Stefan Hölbfer & Lukas Gaubatz owned the Turbulator today! However Team GB put in a solid performance with Martin Newnham 12th, Simon Thornton 14th and Mark Redsell 17th. Hopefully plenty more rounds to improve over the rest of the week.

After 5 Rounds, the top 20 (out of 54) look like this;

Rank	Pilot	Country	Total Score
1	Hölbfer, Stefan	AUT	3933,30
2	Gaubatz, Lukas	AUT	3916,61
3	Herrig, Andreas	GER	3799,28
4	Paulson, Kyle	USA	3645,16
5	Herrig, Martin	GER	3525,96
6	Borchert, Helge	GER	3459,69
7	Krogh, Søren	DEN	3458,97
8	Rondel, Pierre	FRA	3447,52
9	Mervelet, Matthieu	FRA	3444,52
10	Paulson, Kyler	USA	3396,92
11	Rivero, Carlos	VEN	3372,25
12	Newnham, Martin	GBR	3317,09
13	Segnini, Raul	VEN	3305,96
14	Thornton, Simon	GBR	3281,44
15	Day, Warren	USA	3266,36
16	Marechal, Alexis	FRA	3263,18
17	Redsell, Mark	GBR	3235,82
18	Lee, Wei-Tee	TPE	3189,57
19	Hebsgaard, Knud	DEN	3180,44
20	Tseng, Kuo-Tung	TPE	3100,25

RCRCM DG600

Rich brought a new toy to maiden at Hawes yesterday, an RCRCM DG600, video below.

RCRCM DG600 from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

Hawes Sloping

Trip out to deepest darkest dales to Hawes for powerful lift, cold as usual but warmed up when the sun came out. Rich & Keith were already there with a variety of models including Scalies, F3F and foam. Paul turned up later and Rich taught us both more EM secrets, just need to perfect my pumping and working out what ballast works next, changed my Aileron Differential as well.

Levisham Practice Photos

Here are the photo's from the recent Levisham Practice day last Saturday.

Barbon on a Friday afternoon

Managed to sneak out of work early this afternoon for some Barbon slope soaring. Although the wind had been blowing well all day, once Paul and I got up there the wind started to drop off, the large rainstorms to the South seemed to be dragging the wind all over the place even though it was forecasted Westerly.

Anyway I loaded the Cyril up with 600g of ballast and chucked off with trepidation as there is no landout option at Barbon, just rocks to smash up on. Fortunately there was enough lift to get some EM practise in and even a little bit of reversal. Paul flew next with a heavily ballasted Race MX, this didn't work well in the fleeting lift and eventually Paul gave up and managed to gain enough height for a landing.

The landing zone at Barbon is about 30 ft above the slope edge and about 100 ft behind us, so you need a bit of height to make the landing zone, no rotor though and only the occasional rock. I went for another go, in two minds whether to drop any ballast, fortunately Paul advised that the lift wasn't as good as before so I dropped down to 300g.

As Paul picked up the Cyril to launch he commented how solid it was, I chided him for cursing my model and reminded him that I always feel like I am flying on borrowed time with the Cyril as it used up its 9 lives long ago.

He was right about the lift though, it was definitely departing and I only managed a couple of dozen laps before it went very quiet. I managed to get 40 ft above us, as Paul started to forecast that the wind was going South. Sure enough a big gust 45 deg off stopped the Cyril in its tracks above us and I said out loud, 'Now would be a good time to land!' Unfortunately the Cyril started dragging its tail as the lift failed and I started pushing out to the left to see if we had any lift left, a few poor turns later and I was level with the slope edge and we were onto plan 'B'.

I quickly decided to attempt a down wind landing onto the slope edge rather than struggle and risk landing out on the rocks below. She came in quick with full crow dragging in the wind, coming up the slope edge, quick look to my left to check for rocks, bit late now but what the heck, crow up as she slid through the rough grass, pirouetting as she went by. Another life used up then, as I noticed a couple of rocks in the grass that she had flown over!

Levisham Practice Video

Here is the video of the practise session, at the end of the video Jon Edison expertly lands his Acacia without elevator!

Levisham Practise Day from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

F3F Practise at Levisham

29th September, Levisham, Westerly, 15 - 30 mph, sun & blue skies.

Although EM style is all the vogue at the moment my attempts at Levisham last Saturday on the course had mixed results.

In practise with a good climb out, plenty of ballast and the snap flap turned off (more about that later) EM style turns were fast and good fun, on the course they were consistent, consistently slow!

I struggled with the climb outs, my pumping drifted off the course a couple of times, activating the buzzer's prematurely so I gave up trying to do that.

The run times were in the low 50's, the only run that felt marginally quicker got messed up with a cut which cost me greatly, resulting in a 57.xx run.

After that I gave up the EM style and went back to reversals where I did a 45.xx, 60.xx & a 48.xx. I learned today that EM is consistent where as the reversal is still a bit hit and miss depending on how good your air is.

With regards to snap flap, I managed to find a setting that worked better, I backed it off a couple of mm, down to approximately 1mm and have it coming in later at 30 % (previously had it coming in immediately ). Although I tried it again yesterday back on the home slope (Tow Scar) and in mega lift I ended up with it switched off again, so still a work in progress.

More practice required, but have a better feel for it, I am starting to initiate the turn using rudder with minimal aileron input, following some advice, and trying not to pull too much elevator around the turn. Just need to work on positioning the glider back into the lift band, which is a lot easier with reversal, and finding the bases again with the new style. As always a lot easier in practise than when on the course as there is a still a lot to remember as it does not come naturally, yet!

It does go scarily fast though, and I had a big scare when it nearly took my head off and got spat out into the rotor on the edge, but managed to save it and fight back through the rotor to get back onto the slope!

Video below of practice before we got the course up, still working on the other video.


Cyril at Levisham from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.