KZN Pattern Round Results
July 24th 2011. A League round (which counts towards qualifying for the Masters event)
Held at DMAC Gromor field
Judges
Des Cooper, Fred Wilkinson, Bruce Bell, Johan Britz, Mike Cox, Colin Addis. Thank you for your help.
The results are tabled in this pdf file above. This scoring work was very well done by Fred Wilkinson. Fred is also interested in tabulating the results per judge, to send in to Ivan Olivier, to have our judges nationally graded.
This will be very useful to us, as when we have a provincial event, which we may well do in mid 2012, we will have qualified judges who live in our province. This reduces the costs and hassle of an event drastically. Also, our judges can be graded and promoted with time, and can become National judges and perhaps even International judges. Note that at the 2011 World Aerobatic Champs S.Africa have Bob Skinner as one of the three jury members, and Christo Rust as one of the 18 judges. No other country has more than this.
It is interesting to see that Fred has evolved into our "stricter" judge. We all know that it doesn't matter for one contest whether a judge scores high or low, as long as he is consistent and places the flyers in the correct order. Fred is quite correctly grading by the stricter judging as done nationally in S.A., particularly for the higher classes. I have just seen the first round scores at the 2011 World Champs, and note that Christophe Paysant LeRoux has got only 79%, and all three of our S A guys got 63%. So that means that even our national standards are too generous for international events.
Comments
A fantastic entry of 16 pilots hits a new record! With the pilots getting into the air in slick succession we managed three rounds, a braai, and finished by 3:00pm. Pilots needing to get away early were fitted in easily. We were lucky with the weather, as the day after the event was gales, floods and snow. There was some wind early on, but the F3A and Masters pilots took the brunt of this.
A lovely venu, and a sociable braai - thanks to DMAC and Clive Gager in particular.
Novice
We were delighted to have Eike have his first very competent try at pattern, quite appropriately with a Matt designed Saphir from 20 years ago. Clive has flown once before, and used his large scale petrol plane, to get the top score 0,6 percent ahead.
Sportsman
Speedy van Niekerk managed to get away long enough from fixing helicopters for the Durban Port, to get back on his Nats form, and break 60%, as did Lynton. Colin and Dave were just behind, with very good flying from Dave Greer with his .25 size electric Diamante doing his first try at this class. It had astonishing vertical performance, but I think he psyched himself out of doing a proper stall turn by declaring in advance that it wouldn't do one!
Advanced
Johan de Lange flew with us for the last we will see of him before going to Saudi for a two year stint. His 2m Osmose was flown excellently. Arthur was less than a percent behind, and when he can get the distance flown correct, he will be as good or better. Clive, Alex and Ian all got over 60%
Masters
John was the only entry, with his 110 size electric Siebart WindS, and did well.
F3A
It is such a pleasure to have Jason to compete against in this class. He got a 68%, and I flew much better without my Nats nerves. We were both flying 2m electric planes.
Distance
None of our 16 flyers flew too far out. A small number of the pilots, such as Johan, flew the right distance out, and it is no coincidence that his score was very high. A 2 metre plane should be flown 140 to 170 metres away from the pilot, and a smaller plane proportionally less far out, so that it looks about the same. Nearly everybody else flew MUCH closer in than that. I know that when a plane gets very far out it is not so easy to see if the wings are level in flight. But just try and get used to seeing it further out. You may be surprised that you can let it go for a bit with level wings, even if you cannot see it as well as you would like. Certainly on a windy day you are going to find it totally impossible to exit from one turnaround manoeuvre, fly straight and level for a short while, do three rolls downwind, then another little straight and level, then do an end box manoeuvre if you are only 100 metres away. Give it some practice and try.
Regards
Neil Allen
No comments:
Post a Comment