Another long day at the office. We left the hotel at 6:30 for the contest site. It was raining, windy (much more than yesterday) and cold. The rain was so bad that they delayed the start by an hour to let the ceiling clear out enough to fly. By then, the wind was about 25 mph with gusts higher. Wayne was first up and really got beat up pretty bad. Dwight was next, followed by Curtis a couple of pilots later. All three guys had problems in their flights and weren't happy after they landed, with both Wayne and Dwight blowing one maneuver each. We went over to the other line and watched the Japanese team fly. Generally, they handled the conditions better. After we watched the big name flyers we went to lunch and then Wayne and Cliff went out to the practice site to work on controlling the wind gusts in a hover. They had a good session at the field and I think his confidence improved. Curtis was there too, working on getting his model to hover better in the gusts. We finally returned to the hotel at about 19:30. All in all, the weather was pretty severe today and more is forecast for tomorrow.

 

Later in the day, after a rain squall blew through, Scott Gray and Hiroki Itou flew in some pretty decent conditions. As a result they are sitting atop the heap on their respective flight lines. More bad weather is forecast for tomorrow, so we’ll see how the placing is after the second round.

 

For dinner, Nob, Chris, Rolando, Dwight and Cliff went to a fantastic sushi restaurant in downtown Wloclawek. Seems that no matter where we go, we can find good sushi!!! The Japanese team was there when we arrived and seemed to be enjoying themselves.

 

Day 7/ Tuesday 7/31

 

Well, it’s cold and windy again this morning.  The temperature is 11 degrees C, and the wind is blowing somewhere between 5~10m/s and it was overcast, the only thing missing from yesterday is rain. The windsock has got to be tired of laying dead sideway for the past 2 days.  The pilots will have another tough day in the hovering maneuvers.

 

Dwight was up 6^th today and the wind was blowing 9m/s(20mph) as he started his flight.  He flew well under the circumstances, and his hovering maneuvers went well except for altitude control due to gusts.  His comment was “Man, why can’t I get any break from the wind…”

Curtis was up 2 pilots after Dwight and he had the same wind as Dwight.  He was having trouble in the hovering as well, but his aerobatics were good. His complete control of the model during the aerobatics is especially apparent when the conditions are less than ideal.  Scott Gray flew two pilots before Wayne, Scott had very windy condition and it started to rain after the flipping pullback.  He completed the flight, but the officials decided to let him again fly at the end of round.  Wayne was up after the rain and conditions had calmed down quite a bit.  He capitalized during these conditions and put up a very nice flight, scoring mostly 8’s and 9’s.  Scott Gray’s re-flight was end of the day and very calm compared to his earlier attempt, but the sky was gray just like his name making it very hard to see his bullet fast machine.  His repeat flight went very well.

 

Day 8 Wednesday  8/1

 

Finally, a beautiful morning today, the temperature is about 15 degree C. with no wind to speak of.

 

Today, we decided to go to the official practice field because the wind conditions at our ‘secret’ location were not very similar to the contest site. The official site is much closer and has at least as much open area as the contest site, allowing multiple teams to practice without interfering with each other.  We got there at about 8:30 and Japanese team members Dobashi and Sensui were getting ready to start practicing.  We joined them for a quick couple of flights for Wayne and Dwight. It was a good session but Wayne and Cliff had to leave at 9:30, because his flight time was getting close.

 

Dwight and I (Nob) left practice field about 10:15 to catch Wayne’s flight at 11:30.  The practice field was supposed to be a 30 minute ride from the main site, but there was road construction going on along the main route and it ended up taking one hour. From now on, the back way looks like a better way to go!  We got to the site just in time to catch the  end of Scott Gray’s flight and were ready for Wayne’s.  The wind was very calm compared to the past 2 days.  He missed some flags in the  hovering maneuvers, but his aerobatics were excellent.  Dwight was up right after the judges’ lunch break.  He was called to start at 14:30, but when we tried to start the engine, it was flooded.  We finally got the motor with 2 minutes left, and were able to leave the start box without going into the flight time.  True to Dwight’s luck, when he left ready box the wind started to blow again. This time it came as a direct cross wind.  He handled the wind very well and even with missing the circle in the autorotation, he ended up with a very nice score.

 

Curtis’ flight, 2 pilots after Dwight, was also in a good cross wind.  His hovering was not the best we’ve seen, but again the aerobatics were nice and he scored high on Line B.  After the round, we all went back to the practice field and pounded fuel and electrons until we all tired and hungry.  Since we have been in Poland, I believe this was the first day it did not rain at some point.  Wayne and Curtis were in the top 5 as of now but we’re hoping Dwight get’s a break from the really severe wind and can bring his scores up tomorrow.

 

Day 9 Thursday 8/2

Another beautiful day this morning!  Temperature was16 degrees C with the forecast to go up to 22 degrees C or so and the wind changing directions almost 180 degrees from the past 3 days.

 

Wayne was up early with very little wind, but coming now from 4 O’clock position.  He chose to perform his flight in the same direction as the first 3 rounds but ran into trouble with the flipping pullback. Backing up into a quartering tailwind really upset the tail rotor gyro and he was lucky not to lose hold during the flip! The rest of his maneuvers were pretty good.  Dwight was up at 12:23 and the wind was coming and going. His hovering maneuvers were superb and the aerobatics were very clean.  Since he was down in the standings, he needed a good flight.

 

Curtis was up two pilots later and had pretty much the same conditions as Dwight.  His hovering maneuvers were not sitting too well, but the aerobatics were clean as usual.  However, at the end of the pushover with 360 degree pirouette, his motor started to cut off (not out of fuel, just electrons!) and he had to abort the flight and land to save the model.  He landed safely on right side of field, but Dave was unable to call auto. Because of the crosswind, he was doing big and fast maneuvers today and taxed the battery packs to the point where the speed control shut down. At the practice field, he changed the ESC program and put 5200+mAh into 4900mAh battery packs.

 

The Finalists were as follows at the end of 4 rounds:

1. Hiroki Itoh
2. Scott Gray
3. Kazuyuki Sensui
4. Manabu Hashimoto
5. Yokohiro Dobashi
6. Manabu Hashimoto
7. Wayne Mann
8. Curtis Youngblood
9. Laurent Lombard
10. Barnhard Egger
11. Enno Graber
12.  Rudiger Feil
13. Steve Roberts
14. Stefano Luci
15. Oliver Wessel

 

It was very unfortunate that Dwight did not fish in the top 15, but the weather conditions he had to fly in during the 1^st and 2^nd rounds pretty much took his chance way from doing that. On the two flights where he flew in more reasonable conditions, he was able to demonstrate his abilities very well.

 

The Team results were as follows:

1. Japan
2. USA
3. Austria

 

Day 10 Aug.3

Today was the first fly off for top 15 pilots to decide the individual championship The day dawned with a light rain coming down.  The organizers decided to postpone flying until 16:00 because weather radar showed the entire country ‘under the weather’.  The rain stopped around 10:00 but the sky was pretty dark with occasional low ceilings and sprinkles.  We (Rolando, Cliff, Denise and I) decided to go to the Wloclawek Town Square to do a little souvenir shopping. Curtis, Dave, Wayne and Dwight headed to practice field for more work.  They apparently did some practice done for the different wind direction they experienced the day before.

 

We went back to field around 14:00 because we needed to clarify the reasoning behind a change to the preliminary round normalization system done on Tuesday night.  Originally, the event started under a ‘local rule’ that changed the score averaging (used to normalize all pilots) with new scoring rule, which should be implemented from next year, but they changed the rule to current system after 2^nd round (recalculated after the change of cause.)   If they kept the rule we started the event, Dwight was 15^th place, and he would been in final rounds.  Horace clarified that  FAI Juries were capable to change those local rules, so the chance of Dwight been to the final round had ended…

 

At 16:00, Cliff and other 2 pilots did judges scoring calibration flight, and first round of final rounds started after 16:20.  Curtis was up first and wind was fairly calm although still overcast sky.  He had decent flight. Following was Itou.  He had excellent flight without wind (he flew excellent with wind too.)  By the time Scott Gray was up, wind started to blow.   Dobashi was up right before Wayne and started to rain again, so organizers stopped the round and decided to re start the round 7:00 tomorrow morning.

Sorry I couldn’t post anything today.  Connection was so slow and I was tired, so I gave up for today.

 

Day 11 Aug. 4

We had early start today and it was long day.  We had all 3 round flights, award ceremony, and banquet in all in one day.

Weather was near perfect condition in the morning.  Beautiful sky, and little to no wind.  When Curtis, Itou and Scott went up and they flew very well. By mid morning, wind start blow exactly weather forecasters were expecting.  Dobashi was up right before Wayne and he had hard time on hovering.  Wind was keep blowing when Wayne flew.  He handled wind very well, but score was 440.5.

 

Round 1 score:

 

 

Round 2 started as scheduled.  Flight order was Stefano Lucci up first.  Wayne 4^th, Sensui 9^th, Curtis 11^th,Itou 12^th, and Scott Gray 15^th.  It was windy whole round. So the conditions were pretty equal to pretty much to everybody.  Wind direction was 10 O’clock to 12 O’clock and make aerobatics and auto rotations very difficult.

Spectators clapped hands when a pilot did really nice maneuver.  We heard a lot of clapping from those top pilots.