GDSHS

Contest Report

16JN07 EZG “One Design”

“Beer Cooler Classic #1”

WOW, WHAT A DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

You really don’t have to read the rest as the first line sums it up, but in the interest of longevity I will digress.

The weather was great, low wind, hot (90+) and humid, no thermals for the first two rounds and challenging ones for the last two rounds. In other words, a great day for a “Beer Cooler” contest. We have lovingly taken to calling our “One Design” sailplanes (Multiplex Easy Gliders): “Beer Coolers”.

We all had fun flying the ‘One-Design’ planes and MOM was far more exciting than our normal TD club contests which became boring to me a long time ago. The down side is we are using four high starts to run ‘four-up’ heats so the name Greater Detroit Soaring and Hiking Society is back in play. No retrievers here and old guy’s get tired quickly (maybe the exercise is a good thing).

This was our first Seeded Man-on-Man contest using a Flight Window (aka. F3J rules) and it did have a few bugs. On the whole it worked very well. Hutch and I are both SMOM knowledgeable so knew what to expect and how to fly the competition but some of the other members got a baptism in the techniques required to fly this event, next time they will be more up to speed and have even more fun than they did this time.

The word “Undertaker” has a new meaning to some. SMOM does have it highs and lows in the emotional category.

Although the contest was planned to be a fun and learning experience for most of the members, it was a contest with really high value prizes from the dollar store for the top players.

Hutch and I battled tooth and nail for the first place prize with Rick and Ken trying hard to catch up.

The contest gave us a chance to help Roger get started in contesting and Wolf to do some TD work without a screaming 1000-watt motor on the front of his plane.

Due to the fact that the field was only half cut, we had to make an early setup decision to cut the high-start strings from about 200 feet down to about 40 feet. This did not seem to matter much as we were getting about 200-250 foot launches which is fine for a MOM event and makes working the low lift very important.

Because of the short lines and a total lack of lift early in the day, I called 4-minute maxes for the first two rounds (no one max’ed) and 6-minute maxes for the last two rounds (a couple got maxes).

Analysis of the contest:

It was tight all day because no one could lift out and bury the group, a lot of miss-launches from high-start newbie’s early on made for some low initial scores but even the high scores were really low until normalized. This is what MOM is all about; don’t worry about a max, only being the last guy down in a sub-max round.

But in case you are wondering, landings still win the contest and there were only a few landings all day (no-excuse other than not knowing the planes well enough and no landing practice).

We have about 20 EZG’s in the club and seven came to play. It would be so much more fun if they all showed up (glad they did not on this first contest as the bugs needed to be worked out).

Although today was to be a fun event (not much emphasis on the contest part), this format will be a great contest with more players and maybe we should do an area wide event for dollar-store prizes.

High starts are great equalizers, no gonzo launches here to stress the plane or to get much of an advantage. A 30-foot advantage is about all you can muster.

Scoring is not easy while you are flying so in a large contest a dedicated scorer would be needed. Turn-around time is needed between rounds, I have not found a computer program yet that works in all circumstances so manual (error prone) tabulation is still the method used.

The pilot’s meeting will have to be stressed more and window scoring explained in painstaking detail, as some of the pilots never did grasp the concept during the event (my bad here). Late arrivals do not help because it is a more technical format than the lottery TD contest that anyone can pick up in 10 seconds. If I do another contest like this, I will type out an instruction sheet for the flyers and timers and post it on our group site or the web page before the contest so the pilots/timers will be somewhat more prepared.

Even this low level contest took a lot of field help to work. Without Hutch, Ray, John White Mike and others pitching in to set up the field and keep the high-starts working, it would not have worked. I want to thank the guys a lot, especially those that shagged the high-start for me while I did the scoring.

I am tired of writing so until the next Window-Timed, SMOM contest with Beer Coolers, have fun and practice those landings in all kinds of wind.

Jack Iafret

Beer Cooler Classic #1 Lord and Master

	*BEER COOLER CLASSIC #1*



		FLIGHT GROUP A
		ROUND 1	4.00
Freq	Name	Time	Land	Points	Norm	Place
33	Ray	1.16		76	543	2
58	Roger	0.3		30	214	5
23	Hutch	2.2		140	1000	1




		FLIGHT GROUP B
		ROUND 1	4.00
		Time	Land	Points	Norm	Place
2.4	Mike/Ken	1.02		62	350	3
2.4	Jack	2.57		177	1000	1
2.4	Wolf	0.45		45	250	4
43	Rick	0.00				6



		FLIGHT GROUP A
		ROUND2	4.00
Last Total		Time	Land	Points	Norm	Cum	Place
1000	Jack	2.24		144	1000	2000	1
1000	Hutch	1.22		82	560	1560	2
543	Ray	1.17		77	534	1077	4
350	Mike/Ken	0.32		32	220	570	6


		FLIGHT GROUP B
		ROUND 2	4.00
		Time	Land	Points	Norm	Cum	Place
250	Wolf	3.04		184	1000	1250	3
214	Roger	0.21		21	114	328	7
0	Rick	2.25		145	788	788	5



			FLIGHT GROUP A