F5B Thumaide April 2009

After that, the day started on a bad note when, during a pre-competition test flight Ludo crashed his only plane. He headed home early, but we are all sure he will be back another day.

It has been a while since we mounted all the equipment, so statements like "how did this work again?", or "how did we have to mount that again?" were heard, but by 10.00 AM everything was set up, the officials were briefed, a starting list was composed and 11 pilots were ready to get going.

In the 2S (7 cells before) category, we had a new contestant, Antoniewicz(his name) Wojciech(that's his first name). A Polish guy, who came to see an F5B contest a couple of years ago and has now decided to give it a try. For a first participation, he flew pretty good, he almost doubled the number of laps he flew (10 in the first round => 17 in the last round) which was great for him. On top of that he nailed his final landing with 30 points and got to go home with his plane intact. Always a good thing :). Hopefully he'll be back next time.

Another first was the use of 2.4GHz radio equipment by Luc Van Tricht and Willy Verschoren. They have been training with it for some time now, without any problems. Their equipment also worked perfectly the entire day. So even with carbon-kevlar fuselages, this type of transmitter-receiver works flawlessly. One just needs to position the 2 small receiver antennas outside the fuselage at a correct angle. The initial steps for this type of equipment have been set and has a promising future in F5B. Luc blew up his motor a couple of days ago, so he participated with some "not so state of the art equipment". But hey, besides winning, we are all here to have a good time too, which was certainly the case.

As Luc, I also participated with my B-equipment. I destroyed my 3S model a couple of weeks ago in a very stupid way. Imagine this scene: an ordinary sunday afternoon, arriving on the field, my son (3 years old) in the back seat holding his toy plane since SWMBO (Sho Who Must Be Obeyed) had a bright idea "yeah, U go flying with daddy, it will be fun". We arrive at the field, take out the equipement, put in a fully charged 3S pack (which is positioned just besides the mounting holes of the wing if all goes well, and just below if all isn't so well). Some people come talk to me, the son starts throwing his toy plane around too close too the cars, and I start bolting my wing to the fuselage using metal screwes. Suffice to say I was a little distracted, even though I remeber at some point thinking, mmmh, is it normal there is so much resistance when bolting on the wing? I didn't think so, but meanwhile still bolting away when suddenly.... a whole lot of smoke, an encredible burning smell and everybody running in all directions. The metal screw went through the fully charged 3S pack. Result: everything fried (receiver, battery, controller) motot corroded by the stuff that came out the battery, and a fuselage that looked more like some charred remains then something else.

But, we degress...

In the FAI category Hughues and Gilles Lefebvre were taking the high road and performed nicely. I think it was Hughes plane that had some trouble during his last flight and he neede to land early. Nevertheless, in the end, when taking into account 2 out of 3 flights, they both had the maximum score and ended both at the first Place. Gilles got the best 3rd round, so I guess he can be named the winner of the contest.

We completed 2 entire rounds by 12.30 PM, so everything went along nicely.

At noon the people of the club in Thumaide prepared us a nice BBQ, which was much appreciated by all.

the last round was completed by 15.30 PM and local pilots could use their field again. That's it for today, which means taking down all the equipment again

We held a small ceremony, communicating results and thanking the local club for the use of their field and all the helpers for their help. These event would not be possible without them.

Results can be found below or in this spreadsheet:

Thanks to Jacques, the detailed results of every flight can be found here.

Some pictures, a description of the setup of planes of different competitors as a nice "Historical" thread can be found here, thanks to Wim Hanssens)

See you all next week for F5D in Diest

DiEtEr