CLUB “ONE DESIGN” CONTEST REPORT
(SEEDED MAN-ON-MAN)
September 27, 2008
Thanks to Roger Van Elslander we had one of the most fun days of the year at the field.
At the beginning of the year we had scheduled an EZG (Easy Glider or Beer Cooler) contest for this weekend but there was not much interest being shown by the club until a week or so before the scheduled event. Roger sent out a note asking about it and ball started to get rolling downhill. At the end of a series of emails, I volunteered to CD if we could have a 2X SMOM contest. No one objected so I was on the hook.
The ‘One - Who - Does - Not - Do - Emails’ (Hutch) and the ORF’s were discussing it on Wednesday prior to the event and he suggested we do a lunch as well as have a contest. Of course Wolf came to the rescue and volunteered to do the dogs and brats and stuff so the big day was starting to build into a fun event.
As the morning of combat arrived I drove through pea soup fog to get to the field and really started to worry, but about five miles north of AO, it cleared. A good omen for sure. It was to be sunny and no wind all day according the TV, but as usual; they lied.
It was cloud-covered and windy most of the day until the contest was almost over and then the winds went down to about 5 mph. All day the winds went up and down quite a lot so ballast changes were the name of the game.
We set up the winches, had a pilot’s meeting and had round one on the way about 10:30, which was our target time.
We flew a 6 min. first round and 10’s for the last 5 rounds. The target time really made no difference as no one maxed all day. All the heats were kind of close and most were really close making landings really important as we figured the landings into the raw score before normalizing. Not many landings were made so those that got points made good gains in round scores.
Dennis Kozak got the longest flight of the day, a 7:55 and wins the “I buried Hutch” award. The real hot thumbs early on belonged to John Ferguson with four 1000 point rounds in a row but a pop-off in round five did him in from almost sure victory.
As in all SMOM contests, one mistake and it takes several rounds to catch up so if you make a mistake late in the game, it is difficult to recover. Also because it was a 2-UP contest 50% of the fliers got 1000’s each round forcing the scores to be close all day.
All this makes for a really fun time as your chances for a 1000-point round are very good and this makes one feel better and fly better next round.
We all had a ball watching the heats, 2X is just interesting one-on-one competition. Comparing one pilot’s strategy to another’s is both easy and fun for a spectator.
From a pilot’s point-of-view, it meant you had to fly defense all day and make sure the “Other Guy” came down first or you were never more than a few seconds away from his time. All day long the flights were in the 2:30 to 5:00 minute range but so what, you only had to be better than the other guy. Because the lift was so bad all day, it would have been a really boring “normal” TD contest.
One of the fun facts is several of the pilots shared planes as not everyone has an EZG and I mention this because Mike Wade whipped his benefactor, how embarrassing!
The newer flyers of course ended up flying against one another (it is seeded you know) and the big dogs against the big dogs so everyone felt comfortable and had fun flying in their own skill group. Kind of like a lot of little contests under a big umbrella contest. I love it that John White and Roger and several other beginners are flying in a contest and improving their skill level rapidly. This rapid progression just not happen sport flying.
The last flight between Dave and I was a nail biter for me as Dave usually out launches me a bunch (the secret for wining in a no lift day) but he went left and I went right and I got lucky, but just! A 2:20 against a 2:14 but I had a 64 landing to pull me ahead from a 200 point deficit going into the round.
Results
Place |
Name |
Score |
|
1 |
Jack Iafret |
5610 |
|
2 |
Dave Corven |
5470 |
|
3 |
Mike Wade |
5430 |
|
4 |
Dennis Kozak |
5310 |
|
5 |
Hutch |
5240 |
|
6 |
John Ferguson |
5040 |
|
7 |
Rick Waitulionis |
4990 |
|
8 |
Roger Van Elslander |
4560 |
|
9 |
Ray Milio |
4420 |
|
10 |
John White |
2900 |
|
11 |
Dave Shaw (DNF because of a work call) |
2030 for two rounds |
Your CD for the day;
Jack Iafret