FSS 2 – Sun 04/01/12, Barr St Field

The Gordon Report.

Sunday was forecast a wind from the North West which really made using the Barr Street field a little difficult with the parking lot furthest away from the end we needed to set up. Nevertheless we went ahead and set up on the South end of the paddock by climbing through the fence and carrying the gear about 50 yards across . This site appears to be a great soaring site with many thermal generators courtesy of the variety of topographic features both man made and natural. Being adjacent to a fairly large wilderness area provides plenty of tree-lines to explore and on some sides there is cultivation and roadways etc.
The format for day 2 of this FSS event was Open winch – honors callup where the top 4 pilots from the previous round always start off the following round when the CD says it is time to begin. This is a fairly ingenious system of “honoring” the most recent best pilot and a sort of leveling mechanism to make sure that those who follow the “experts” get to see what they can do with the air. It certainly keeps the “open winch” type contest moving along at a good pace as there is no sand bagging – (at least none for the first 4 away.)
This day at Barr Street the lift was good as always but there were some pronounced periods of sink which could really spoil the party if you were unlucky to be called up at the wrong moment. As can happen the top four in Round 6 were launched into this apparently “bottomless abyss” and the experts were all on the ground in less than 4 minutes.
This sort of thing really shakes up the top order and adds to the interest in our FSS events where the honors system is used. You have to be really all on your metal for every launch and launch with a plan or the sink will certainly bite you. It bit me, Ed, Dillon and Paul in that round.
It was sort of exciting to fly a contest at a new field and I think everybody but Larry really enjoyed the venue. The long grass and the distance back to the car really wore on Larry where we were setup so we will need to look at that in the future. Maybe a “golf cart” or vehicle access to the field would be good.
12 pilots duked it out at Barr Street for 7 rounds of great thermaling and precision landing. The same tape as yesterday was chosen with the safety line set at 12ft 6inches from the hunsky today. This was in response to some of the grumbles about models being too easily past the safety line with a wing tip (scoring a zero) on the Saturday.
I was one of those on Saturday also but I prefer to at least be able to guide the model to the spot with precision Versus guessing where the spot is when it is too far away.
Jamie Mercado made the very most of the conditions and guided his 4M X to some great maxes and landings to finish up on top with 3780 points. Rick Eckel kept his Perfect flying for enough seconds to take second place with 3688 points while Dillon put in another sterling performance to place (for the 4th time in succession) with a 3rd on 3612 points. Dillon was once again flying his Pike with his Xplorer currently out of commission.
First place Sportsman was Mike Naylor on 2679 flying a Shadow today and Enrico Parades came out to fly with his K2 coming 2nd in Sportsman with 2406 points. 3rd Sportsman was Lweis Grey and his own design Scimitar.
It was certainly a successful day at Barr Street and we have now proven that a good TD contest can easily be conducted there as necessary when access to our SCC site is restricted.
Thanks to everyone for helping with the equipment ingress and egress on Sunday as it required more than the usual support. A particular thanks to John Graves and he wife Kim who did all the scoring for both days. We could not have had near as much fun without you.
Gordon

Sunday Full Scores

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