Report from Moreton, Australia, 10 flew.
Dear Ron,
Greetings from down under. A big thankyou to you from our club for stepping into Brian's shoes and taking on the roll of IPC co-ordinator, we wish you well. Brian did a great job and we hope to still see him in your team score and hear from him from time to time.
Sorry about dragging the chain holding our event, but due to the timing of Easter this year and a bit of a mix up in our Clubs published date for the event we only held our IPC on Sunday 23rd. I trust we still sneak inside your cut off date.
The weather man was predicting fairly strong SE winds. In our part of the world this can mean less than pleasant thermal soaring conditions, however someone was smiling on us we enjoyed light winds, good thermals and sunshine with a high of about 26 deg C. This really is a lovely time of the year in South East Queensland. At the beaches the water is still comfortable to swim in and the burning heat of summer has passed. Thermal soaring in mid summer here can be a bit much with temps in the high 30's. I think we are a bit spoilt here or just sooks, as even in winter we think it gets a bit cold and don't fly a lot mid winter. I suppose I should put this into perspective as our winters are really cold (ha ha) getting down to about zero occasionally with highs during the days of around 15 deg C.
Most club members had arrived at the field by around 9.00am and we commenced flying by 10.00 with two groups of 5. Due to the light and fickle winds, launches varied significantly. We even had a number of down wind launches making that thermal hunting quite critical if you were to achieve any respectable flight time. Landing also proved a bit of a challenge due to the shifting or little wind – makes a big differences when trying to slow the model down which was evidenced by a number of models sliding through to spot with pilots and timers darting out of the unexpected extended slide, or the always entertaining and graceful leap into the air while trying to juggle the transmitter and not step on the model.
I would have to say that on the day the conditions in the air were quite good with subtle lift available generally somewhere in each flight. For me the most memorable flights are those where after searching and searching you have lost most of your launch height and left with 25 meters or so of altitude and not even half way through the flight time. You think you notice a slight wing wobble, you go round not loosing any height in the first turn and then with the next half a dozen circles you try to centre on that elusive bubble of rising air. Sometimes it seems to take forever but eventually it starts to break and the model begins to climb away. That's what keeps me coming back.
Anyway enough of my dribble, I think we did quite well managing a team score of 10999 although I don't know if it will be good enough, we'll have to wait and see.
I have included a couple digi photos: - MRSSA members who participated on the day, John and Frank doing a great job with the bar-b-que after the event, and a few casual shots on the day.
