Premier Duration Dave Griffin
Day 2 dawned clear and calm so we set up for NZ Premier Duration. This is a thermal contest requiring a 10 Minute flight in a 12 minute working time, with precision landing. it is flown in rounds and groups like F3J
Above: Allan Knox with Kiwi Icon Below: Joe Wurtz prepares to launch Dave Griffith’ s Maxa
Above: Long tail Maxa 4m making the most of the light air
Early on lift was light. As the weather cleared more though the afternoon we begun to see patch’ s of lift come through and people were achieving their flight times making the landing points even more important. The battle at the front was intense with Joe Wurts, Sharn Davies, Peter Williams and Scott Chisholm all close together making it very important to ensure landing accuracy. It was great to see the rise in Sharn Davies skill levels, in the past year He gets my most improved award, he continues to get better with each event and his experience grows. It was also great to see newcomers Alex Hewson and Andrew Palmer both doing well in their first F3j competition. Andrew would have achieved a high placing if it wasn’ t for a sad situation seeing him look away from his model for a moment then looking back at another model whilst his proceeded to destroy itself. Andrew is showing very early signs he will be at the front very soon once his new toys arrive.
Late in the afternoon and as it turned to evening it became extremely important to get good high launch’ s and leave the model alone as much as possible to preserve its height. We refer to this as being min-sink mode and it is a very good method to achieve good flight times in marginal lift like we were seeing. These conditions can see the scores separate quite often and results change.
At the end of the day, under almost darkness, we completed round 6. Joe was declared the winner. Yet again Joe’ s consistency and accuracy had him at the top of the results page followed by Sharn Davies and Peter Williams in third. Again top marks must go to Dave James for achieving so much from such a small space of time. Dave it was very impressive and we all appreciated his efforts.
We managed a couple of rounds then clouds gathered and a active front could be seen heading our way on the Weather Radar. It soon arrived and the rain set in. Models and valuable equipment were covered, a gazebo erected, andcoffee and pies ordered. About 1 hour 30 later we got back to flying for the rest of the day.
In the morning lift could be found and exploited, but after the rain the lift was harder to find and difficult to climb very far in. The best tactic seemed to be to cruise around very slowly in min sink mode, working any gentle bubbles that occasionally showed a little cimb potential.
Joe excelled as usual both in the flying and landing elements of the event. Alex Hewson flying is‘ Perfect Maxa’- a model made from parts of 2 damaged models- flew really well all day placing just behind Joe. Dave Griffins new Maxa 4M and some smooth flying helped Dave into 3rd place with more than one low level save to make the time target. Our Australian guest Dave Pratley, flew well all day for 4th place. Ted Bealing from Auckland, one of the older gentleman of NZ Soaring, flew really well with his new Maxa for 6th place. After a great day Friday, Sharn struggled to find form in the light conditions struggling to make much more than 8 minutes in many rounds. Scott flew well, but suffered a loss of time in the first round when he discovered his transmitter non responsive to the on switch. A blown fuse was quickly swapped and he got started late to record 5 minutes.
Both Friday and Saturday evening we adjourned to the hotel for dinner and entertaining conversation on subjects dear to our hearts. Saturday evening we were treated to a night flying demo by Andrew with his LED equipped heli. Andrew is a truly talented and well practiced pilot, really putting the machine through its paces. Via its LED system the helicopter glows various colours and flashes up a number of images such as stars, smiley faces and Pacman- very clever!