Toronto’s Free Flight Club (MAAC)

Hello Everyone,

Attached please find the 2013 North American Cup Flyer

Thank you,

Tony Mathews

Dear Friends,

Please find attached the results of the 2012 FAI FF Team Trials held Labour day weekend (Sept 1-3rd) at CFB Borden.

First off, I want to thank all those competitors that participated. Everyone flew very well and every one of them would make a deserving team member.

But with only 3 places available for each category some people were going to be happy and some were going to be disappointed!

We lucked out with great weather for all three days. Temperatures in the high twenties (C) with blue skies and light winds each day.

As some of you know, this year MAAC requested that the trials be decided by the results from two separate contests, ideally on different weekends. The idea was to encourage participation in the yearly contest schedule and to avoid the tendency for some individuals to hibernate for two years and fly only at the trials. Unfortunately, this concept doesn’t suit a geographically vast country like Canada with modelers spread out nearly from coast to coast. Several modelers from out west expressed their desire to participate in the trials this year so a compromise was made. We would still have two contests to decide the trials (and the competitor MUST fly both to qualify for the team) but they would both take place over the labour day weekend.

As a result a different trials format was arranged with the results of each contest going towards the final placing. The lowest total score (1 point for each placing) would decide the team members. This approach made it important to do well each day as a slip up could cost you a team place.

Saturday morning dawned calm but very foggy. As a result, the first round was delayed until the fog had cleared and until we could determine which direction (if any) the wind was drifting towards.

The contest got underway with many maxes being recorded for the extended max first round. The light winds made for some pleasantly short retrievals for some and some very nice flights were observed. Some huge thermals were seen during Saturday afternoon. Ladi Horak and Bernard Guest (Calgary) each had a flyaway in F1B (same giant thermal) even though they dt’d early (radio DT) because their models did not decend on DT. Bernard’s actually went up and out of sight on DT!

At the end of the day 6 competitors (2 in each class) had full scores requiring fly-offs in each class to decide the winners. This was certainly new for an FAI FF Trials at Borden!

The wind had picked up at the end of round seven and did not abate until just before sunset, so it was decided to hold the fly-offs on Sunday morning just after sunrise.

Sunrise on sunday again dawned very calm and foggy so there was a slight delay while we waited for the fog to clear enough to fly.

The first flyoff was in F1A wirh Vidas Nikolajevas going head to head with Jama Danier. Jama had been launching extremely high with his new LDA model while Vidas was flying extremely consistently with his conventional profile model. Most of the smart money was on Jama with his launch height advantage from his LDA model. Jama towed up first and launched but not quite to his usual standards (the launch was a bit to the right). Vidas towed up after Jama and found some bouyant air on tow and made a clean launch. While Jama slowly glided down it was apparent that Vidas had found some good air as his model held height for a long time. In the end it was Vidas coming out on top with a very good 6:50 and Jama would settle for second place with 6:15. So much for the LDA advantage at sunrise!

The next flyoff was in F1B with Ladi Horak going against Bernard Guest of Calgary flying in his first team trials.

Bernard wound first but broke a motor in his model whilst adding additional turns and broke the fin and pylon when his motor broke! He switched to the reserve model but repeated the proceedure with another broken model and no flight recorded! Too bad as Bernard’s model had been going very well on saturday and he was very keen to try and humble Ladi! Ladi wound and made a very nice flight for a 5:52 score in gentle drift.

The F1C boys decided that they didn’t want to risk their models going into the woods and chose to have a hand launch flyoff with Yuri Shvedenkov just beating Rostislav Perchensky by less than 1 second!

The flyoffs delayed the start of Sunday’s contest but we were underway soon after with very good conditions. The air was a bit trickier than Saturday morning with only 1 max in F1B and three sub max flights in F1A. Again there were huge thermals on Sunday afternoon with models seen climbing to incredible heights before slowly decending on DT. Fritz Gnass lost a model to a giant thermal on Sunday afternoon. Yuri Shvedenkov lost an F1C to a wind shift and a very large wandering glide circle. I think it is better to have a slightly tighter glide circle at Base Borden as the field is surrounded by trees on all sides.

The afternoon saw some dropped flights in F1A as the pressure was on to try and fly perfectly especially for those that had dropped flights in Saturday’s contest.

2 competitors in F1A had perfect scores on Sunday – Shlomi Roszenweig and Vidas Nikolajevas. A flyoff was not needed to determine the team placings on Sunday as the total placings had determined theteam.

For F1A the team for the 2013 W/C is: Vidas Nikolajevas, Shlomi Roszenweig and Peter Allnutt. Coincidentally the same team as had flown so well at the 2011 W/C in Argentina.

For F1B the team is: Ladi Horak, Tony Mathews and newcomer Bernard Guest. bernard has been a long time free flighter and accomplished builder/flyer and this is his first full year flying FAI models. I’m sure that he will be a great asset to our team with his enthusiasm and energy.

For F1C the team is: Yuri Shvedenkov, Rostislav Perchensky and Frank Schlacta, the smae team that we have sent for several W/C now. This is an experienced team capable of very good results.

I want to thank Nina Slezak for all of her help keeping score on the weekend. I couldn’t have done it without her!

On Monday some of us went itno the woods after the lost models and retrieved all but Yuri’s F1C. Leslie Farkas will arrange for an opportunity for Yuri to get onto the site with a tree climber to retrieve the model.

Thank you all for your efforts and hard work. I think we have chosen a very strong team that should do us proud in France in 2013.

Regards,

Tony Mathews

FF Chairman

Hello Friends,

This past weekend we had glorious weather for the Huron cup.

Please find attached the results sheet and a few photos. If anyone has any more photos please send them to me by E-mail.

Saturday started with some controversy however. When arriving at Range Control we were told that we would not be able to use motorcycles for retrieval as we have been doing without problems for many years. No amount of discussion would make them change their minds so the flyers with chase bikes had to reluctantly leave them behind at range control. This meant that we would have to retrieve all of the models on foot! Some of the older flyers felt that this would not be possible due to various health issues and unfortunately we had a few flyers decide to either not enter or go home. This is a sad situation as the weather was nearly ideal for a free flight contest. Rest assured that we will be trying very hard to rectify this situation for the Canada Cup in August.

We had a small but enthusiastic contingent from America which is always nice to see. Roger Morrell brought some of his grandsons to terrorize the senior F1B flyers. The lads flew very well!

I brought my 10 year old nephew Jack and he was a great help to his Uncle on the score table. He also did very well in F1G (Coupe) as the results show!

The drift on Saturday morning was light and roughly from the South. After the 2nd round the wind shifted towards the west so a decision was made to suspend the next round and move towards the West side of the field. After that the wind behaved itself and we were able to fly the remainder of the seven rounds of FAI from that location. The air was very tricky however as we had only 1 clean score in each of the FAI events. The thermals are not always easy to pick at CFB Borden! A few models left the field due to some massive thermals and very long decents on DT. Radio DT is almost essential at Borden but the risk of DTing below the max time is always a risk. Then again a model 50 ft up a pine tree is not good either!!

As of this writing the only model unaccounted for was Cameron Ackerley’s F1B (lost in the 4th round). Cameron decided to retire from the contest at that point and concentrate on finding his model.

While the winds were light both Saturday and Sunday, the temperature was high (31 C with high humidity) making retrieval on foot doubly difficult. Water and sunscreen were two essentials for the weekend.

Some scores of mention are Wil Murrell’s excellent 2nd place in F1B as a Junior and Jack Merrifield’s 3rd place in F1G also as a Junior. They kept the senior flyers on their tows!

While the turnout wasn’t large by any standards, the flying was excellent and it was great to see both new and old faces again on the flying field.

I hope to see you all again (and more hopefully!) next month at the Canada Cup. Remember, it is both a World cup AND America’s cup contest so come on out and try and get some extra points!

But watch out for those Juniors……

Tony Mathews

CD