Showing posts with label F3J worlds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label F3J worlds. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Friday, July 11, 2008

Wow- way cool worlds photos



Les just sent me THIS link to more photos from the Worlds. These were my faves...

Credit to the person who took the photos, (I'm sorry I can't figure that out).







Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Oh ok Joe gets the last word....



Gidday y'all!

Currently at London Heathrow awaiting a flight back to California. Will be in CA for a week or two before returning home.

I'd like to express my thanks and appreciation for everyone that supported the New Zealand team, including the kindness of JR and Horizon Hobby, Kennedy Composites, RC Bandits, the AucklandSoar club, FoamWorks, GlidingCanterbury, NZMAA, the NZ Soaring SIG, as well as the many individuals that purchased raffle tickets, t-shirts, as well as donated money to the team. Without all of your help it would have been much more difficult for NZ to field a team halfway around the world!

I would also like to express my appreciation to the US team for allowing us to use two of their towers throughout the competition. The tow team, comprised of Kelly Johnson and Dave Kalamen, was wonderful. Without them we would have not had nearly the success. Their level of professionalism and attention to detail was only matched by their athleticism when we turned the 'winches' on! Guys, good on ya!

A few disorganized notes on the wonderful event in Turkey for ya.

I was quite impressed with the event organization and the facilities. The Soarist club put on a fantastic competition. The level of flying skills was amazing with a definite advance in the overall competition level since two years ago. Some of this might be airframe related, but in my opinion it was mostly pilot related. The air was challenging enough to make it a landing comp for only a select few people, with most pilots getting hit at least once during the prelims by bad choices or bad luck.

For me it was really great in that it was an air callers event, where if you chose poorly initially you were likely out of luck for making time. The only caveat for this was the treeline/slope at the tent line that provided so many saves during the week. We had so many flights where we were the only ones that got away and then some of the group ended up sloping on the trees for a few minutes until a bubble broke off from the treeline. Without this treeline, there would have been far fewer maxes recorded. That said, I think that the kiwis ended up using the treeline for maybe three or four of our maxes during the event, so we used it a little bit too! :-)

This event appeared to me to first measure thermalling ability to get into contention for the event, then landing skills provided the separation amongst the survivors. There were some difficult calls for the event organizers due to the inherent judgment calls required for the launching after the start of the buzzer, and landing before the buzzer. The event results ended up being dependent on these judgment calls, which is a weakness inherent in F3J competition.

It was an honor to call for the kiwis, DP and AJ during the week. I gave them all a hard time during the week, and they put up very well with my sometimes difficult calling style. Kudos go to all of them for not chucking me off the field!

I was quite impressed with AJs flying and natural thermal ability, although I was a bit tough on him at times (working on tightening up little items for improvement which were pretty small in reality). The landing comp aspect was what ended up dropping him down to third place, with two 95 landings in the flyoffs.

Calling for DP, what is there to say? He is the easiest pilot to call for in the world. Half of the time, he is already aware of what I tell him, and the other half, he gets as soon as I say something. Because of his skills, I just have to get him somewhere near a thermal and he sniffs it out. It was an honor to work with him at yet another WC.

As for the kiwi team... Wow! First kiwi team to compete in F3J since 1998, and the first kiwi team to make it on the podium for soaring!!! All three of the pilots learned very quickly as to what was required to compete at a WC level, and came through to show their skill. Two of the pilots had not ever flown in a true handtow F3J competition until Turkey. The way that the kiwi pilots ended up responding to challenging circumstances was amazing, as demonstrated by one pilot that really put it back together after first having his primary model fail on launch, which was followed shortly by finding out that a close family relative had just passed away.

Sven was the pilot to beat for much of the competition, and lead the preliminary rounds for much of the competition. Towards the end, his flying really got in tune with the challenging air on the field. It was just one landing that took him off of the podium. I think that the most inspired flight that I witnessed at the competition was done by Sven at the ASC cup in the 2nd round. He was down to maybe 15 meters altitude in about 3 minutes, and in very difficult conditions he was able to make the full 20 minutes flight. He matched the winner of that heats score, and finished with what should have been 1999.9 points, enough to win the cup. Unfortunately there was a transcription error on his score as well as the eventual winners score, but Svens score did not get corrected in time for the awards.

Watching the Croation junior Arijan Hucaljuk in the last two rounds of the preliminary rounds was quite the treat. He got a 9:58.5, backed up by a 9:58.1, both with 100 landings!!! Both are amazing scores!

One of the things that I learn about at high level competitions is the level of sportsmanship that occurs amongst the majority of the competitors. It is how one responds to adversity rather than success that measures character and integrity.

Lots more to say, but gotta go...

Regards,
Joe
proud NZ team manager

**********************

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Sven gets the last word...


This is it for me on the F3J worlds until Les gets home and hopefully I will get some good photos. The last word rather deservedly goes to Sven...

Well its all over now and it has been an amazing ride for all of us I
think all of us can be truly proud what team NZ has managed being
awarded the 3rd place team FAI medal will go down as being a huge
highlight in all of our lives!!!

We really enjoyed taking the Aussies money off them last night!!!!!!!

As most of you know I narrowly missed out on 3rd place individual by
not nailing my last landing missed the 100 points by a mare 5cm such
is life!! My personal ambition was top 20 when we started to be
sitting at first after 3 days was a dream and then to make the fly
off by day 5 I was over the moon.

Both our team place and my 4th individual placing would never of been
achieved without the fantastic support we all had from everyone back
home thank you everyone for your positive texts and emails it has
been fantastic we all really appreciated it sorry if I did not get
back to everyone that text me.

For me personally I have to thank my fantastic team Joe as an amazing
caller launcher helper, Les as backup caller making some great calls
during my fly off flights!! He has some great video of me shaking
like a leaf after my low down mid air!!!

Scott and Paul fantastic pit crew getting my model repaired to fly
again.

And Dave and Kelly our most amazing towers these guys were fantastic
checking lines 3 or 4 times after every flight so we would not end up
with a disastrous line brake!!!

Full report to come when I get back to NZ end of the month am now
back in UK at the moment fly to Belgium tomorrow to be reunited with
the family after two weeks away from them.

Thanks again everyone

Cheers Sven

Saturday, July 5, 2008

It's all over bar the shouting



And I bet there'll be a bunch of shouting going on tonight! Congrats to Sven for his 4th placing- seriously awesome!

Les says...

Well the final flights are in and so are the results, yesterday the NZ team confirmed the 3rd place medal for the team event, possibly a first for an NZ team in an FAI world champs?
We almost made it up to grab the silver medal but a slightly bad flight put paid to that but we had a big enough buffer back to 4th place.

The final individual fly offs were just held and the new WC is the german Benedict Feigl, however our own team member, Sven Zaaalberg, placed 4th individually, just 1 point behind 3rd after 5000 points. He unfortunately got a 95 landing on his last flight which ended any chance of moving up as the throw out round round came into play.

The weather and organisation have been brilliant, and now comes the big pack up and the banquet tonight. Prize giving is on the field this afternoon where NZ will receive the team bronze medals, no doubt pics will be posted up at www.f3jturkey.com


Thanks to all for the emails and texts of support over the last few days, and a much bigger write up will follow after we return home.

Cheers, Les.




Coming Home Bronzed and Bronzed

So it's not just the Turkish sun that will give the guys a lovely bronze glow on their return home... it'll also be the bronze medals that they won as the 3rd placed team!

The first 2/6 rounds of the fly-offs have been flown and Sven is comfortably in second place with some other competitors already having used their throw-away.

Go Sven Go!!

Conflicting Emotions



I'm discovering it's hard to be throughly bummed and seriously proud at the same time.

The prelim rounds are over and now it's onto the flyoff.

Exactly what we wanted to happen happened. The right people had some really bad luck and ended up dropping way down the field. Unfortunately exactly what we didn't want to happen also happened. The wrong person had some bad luck and ended up dropping way down the field...

So in the end...

Scott ended up in 22nd place.
Les ended up in 19th place
Sven ended up in 5th place so he made the flyoffs.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Slots to watch...



The Kiwi's are flying in these today....

Round 11
Slot 2=SC, 3=LS, 6=SZ

Round 12
Slot 4=SZ, 6=SC, 7=LS

In our house we give people 'the bone' for bad luck (NO Rowdy not that bone). Basically you wiggle a finger at the Aussie kicker when he's going for a conversion against the All Blacks, or I'll do the bone toward Kieran when the Chiefs play the Highlanders and that sort of thing... There's a lot of bone-ing going on in the direction of the top 11 (except Sven of course) and the top 2 teams at the moment we want to see 'Dad' in the fly off! Go Dad Go!


Where Les admits he is a Nana in Public

This from Les today... (Last night Turkey time.)

"Back to 100% again finally, was getting a bit tired of it (the cold) but ok now.

Pre launch is a wee bit nervy if we dont have a solid call and in the middle rounds they were deliberately running the juniors in the calmer parts of the day to make it easier for them until i think someone pointed out the amount of seniors now onto 2nd or 3rd airplanes too. So now its back to alternating rounds. Tomorrow we start with snr rd11 and so on, should be finished by about 2pm local so 11pm NZ will see who made the flyoff. Then i think they are planning on flying 2 of the flyoff rounds tomorrow afternoon, the other 4 saturday morning. We rebuilt scotts broken model (boom broke in half during the zoom, just failed, not a midair) after flying finished yesterday, a couple of bottles of cyano, some balsa, carbon, builders bog and other bits and we gave it a pretty hard tow before we left the field tonight and it survived ok so he might use it tomorrow. Amazing what can be done in a short time by a determined bunch of guys.

We are a bit nervous about tomorrow, JW was looking at the weather etc when we left and thinks tomorrow might take a little longer to warm up and kick off thermals and we are in early rounds but we have launch height advantage anyway so.......

Supra stabs are blowing up all over the place but people are pushing pretty hard and they weren't meant for these conditions, DP dives too deep in the bucket and pulls out HARD = failure. I've instructed the towers to back off a little bit on my model in the wind but its fairly safe as I'm a nana in pushing over so as not to blow stabs up.

10th round was heaps of carnage and low scores for some people. The thermals in the wind are very tight, you cruise to the expected area after launch and wait for one to hit, the moment it does you wrap into a turn on it and dont let go until it does one of 2 things.....1. The thermal goes "PUFF" and disappears after a gain of maybe 30ft and 2-3 circles or......2. You start to have difficulty seeing the model clearly 3/4km downwind and 1000ft high after 20 circles. When it hits you never know which it will be and you might have to have a go at a few of #1 before you get a #2. Then theres the landing traffic to deal with and the fact the spots are maybe only 50m in front of the tent/tree line making a high short approach reqd. Fun, fun, fun....you betcha!!!! When we get it right its a blast and today all 3 of us got good calls from JW and we skied out bigtime, the frustrating part is that those who dont still often get their time by sloping the tree line which just doesnt seem right when its supposed to be a THERMAL contest!

Anyway, a tad after midnight so up in less than 6hrs for the bus the field (the Dutch team is also in the same hotel as us, we have a 22 seater bus between us complete with driver who stays here too, we can't pronounce the drivers real name so have cristened him Hank for the week, he and the bus is ours to use as req'd, typical day is leaving hotel 6.45am, leaving field 8.30pm for the 45 minutes each way drive) and I'm finally off to bed to dream of big thermals only for NZ tomorrow.

Catch ya, Les.


Overnight Fun and Games

Overnight there was only one round as they flew the Multiplex Cup. A fun comp for the top 7 snr's and top 3 Jnr's.

Les says....

"Not so worrıed about the fly off, have far exceeded my expectatıons here already, ıt would be a bonus but i need some very good fliers to make a mıstake or 2 ın the last 2 rounds.

our prıorıty now ıs to maıntaın NZ ın 3rd or better and get a team podıum fınısh, somethıng NZ has never done before and would be awesome ın ıtself.
As of rd10 thanks to us all gettıng good thermals and flyıng out the slots and the Ukraıne (undıes,undıes,undıes guys) bombıng out ın a couple we have a pretty comfortable buffer of 600 poınts back to 4th now, ın fact we are workıng on chasıng down 2nd place ıf we can.
Wıth sımılar condıtıons forecast tomorrow we feel pretty confıdent we have fıgured out the condıtıons and whats req'd to work the thermals (you really would not belıeve how far downwınd we are goıng wıth no ballast on board) and wıll do all we can to hold on to at least 3rd for grım death.
Thanks for all your support back there everyone...."


Thursday, July 3, 2008

Round 10 and it's time for bed


Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Les---- 6-- 9:53.90-- 95---- 688.9--------991.5-------- 12th
Scott---7--9:53.40 --100 ---693.4--------- 998.4------ 26th

Sven---8-- 9:51.60-- 90---- 681.6--------982.7------- 8th


Ding ding ding- Rrrrrrounnnnnnddd 9

Round 9

Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Sven---1-- 9:50.50-- 100---- 690.5 --------997.5------- 1st
Scott--- 5--9:54.40 --100 ---694.4--------- 997.7------ 30th

Les---- 8-- 9:53.50-- 100---- 693.5--------998.7--------- 12th

New Zealand still 3rd team, Australia has snuck up to 7th.

My friend Aneil isn't feeling so positive that Les will make the fly-off but we in the Stockley House think he's dead wrong... there's still a whole lot that can happen in the next three rounds. and you never know what will be. Go Dad Go!

Not many Kiwi photos around on the website or emails but I did find these....






The're up in....

  • Today's slots...

Round 9
Slot 1=SZ, 5=SC, 8=LS

Round 10
Slot 6=LS, 7=SC, 8=SZ

Round 11
Slot 2=SC, 3=LS, 6=SZ


That's not how 8's supposed to be Babe.

It's amazing what a bung landing can do to your score.....

Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Sven---2-- 9:52.40-- 100---- 692.4 --------997.7------- 1st
Les---- 4-- 9:52.80-- 90---- 682.8--------982.7--------- 13th
Scott--- 7--9:53.20 --100 ---693.2--------- 999.4------- 32nd

Team Results for Round 7 (Discard) - F3J 2008 Seniors
GER

Total Points: 17950.50 Rank :1

20 Feigl, Benedikt 5994.20

22 Laemmlein, Tobias 5980.80

21 Kolb, Philip 5975.50
CZE

Total Points: 17939.00 Rank :2

19 Vostrel, Jaroslav 5986.00

17 Duchan, Jiri 5985.00

18 Sterba, Vitezslav 5968.00
NZL

Total Points: 17704.50 Rank :3

51 Zaalberg, Sven 5997.00

50 Stockley, Les 5987.30

52 Chisholm, Scott 5720.20

The Aussie team are in 9th place.

Hey Les if you get 1000's I'll give you.....
Go Dad Go!!!! Love you babe...8



Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Round 7

Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Sven--- 4-- 9:52.60-- 100---- 692.6 --------1000------- 1st
Scott--- 5--8:00.30 --95 ---573.3--------- 835.6------- 40th
Les---- 8-- 9:52.60-- 95---- 687.6 --------992.2-------- 5th

I'm having an early one tonight... See ya!

Today's Kiwi Flights


Round 7
Slot 4=SZ, 5=SC, 8=LS

Round 8
Slot 2=SZ, 4=LS, 7=SC

Round 9
Slot 1=SZ, 5=SC, 8=LS

The Soldier, the Courtier and an update

Hi all,

There's lots going on at home and I am exhausted...

must have an early night,
must have an early night...
Yeah Right!

So first up some Kiwi spotting..... this is from the Norwegian team's website...



I had some email's while I was out that explain what's been going on....

This from Les...

"7 minute flight we didn't have a solid call on a thermal before launch and ended up a bit stranded away from the pack. Theres a line of trees behind the tents people are sloping and by the time i turned for that I was too low to get much use from it, fell out and was committed to landing, once the wind gets up in the afternoons its very hard to define where to go, conditions are HARD despite the times you are seeing. You know its difficult when JW doesn't have a solid read before launch.

Scott had a boom fail on his perfect rd5 yesterday during the zoom, it might fly again, maybe even this week. Launched the spare and if not for the South Africans sloping for 6 minutes we would've got the 1000 as most others bummed out big time. Apart from that we have been damage/midair free, yes a lot of the other teams have big damage to fix/models lost downwind. We are in conservative mode. Svens rd6 flight yesterday we had a line break but turned it around and relaunched within 40 seconds.

Food is fairly crap, quite bland and steaks come as the chef feels on the day. We have taken to eating at the field before going home, cheaper and slightly better tasting."

and this from Joe as told to Rowdy...

Tis challenging conditions!
We had a painful round six, with one early landing, one plane going boom on tow, and one line break. Fortunately the throwout kicked in at the same time, so the scores still look good! The bigger challenge is in holding the positions after six more rounds. The air is REALLY challenging. Lots of carnage here.
The guys are finally understanding just how much one can flex a Supra... The weak link is the horizontal tail mount.
Round six for Sven was a line break about a second into the tow. I pulled him down for a relaunch as the air was VERY difficult. Would rather take a 50 point hit than a 500 pt hit...
Gotta go, time to call for a jr (AJ McGowan). Rather proud that I am currently calling for the #1 in both jr and sr classes!

More later for you flying types....

And finally here they are daddy....

The Soldier


And the nervous Courtier... there's a story there I'll tell you sometime soon.

Halfway... round six

Round six results....

Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Les---- 4-- 7:04.10-- 100---- 524.1 --------757.6-------- 3rd
Scott--- 5--9:53.80 --95 ---688.8--------- 994.9------- 30th
Sven--- 8-- 9:20.90-- 100---- 660.9 --------951.9------- 1st

I haven't talked to anyone yet or seen any emails with explanations ... but it looks to me like all models are probably still intact which is a lot better than the other teams most of whom seem to have suffered. The weather in the afternoon and evening continues to be a challenge.

Top three teams... the Aussie's are in 13 I can just hear the strains of the anthem now...


CZE

Total Points: 17820.10 Rank :1

17 Duchan, Jiri 5985.00

19 Vostrel, Jaroslav 5981.20

18 Sterba, Vitezslav 5853.90
NZL

Total Points: 17352.60 Rank :2

51 Zaalberg, Sven 5948.90

50 Stockley, Les 5752.70

52 Chisholm, Scott 5651.00
GER

Total Points: 17268.80 Rank :3

22 Laemmlein, Tobias 5967.30

21 Kolb, Philip 5962.30

20 Feigl, Benedikt 5339.20

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

High Five!


Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Les---- 3-- 9:51.90-- 100---- 691.9 --------998.3-------- 3rd
Sven--- 6-- 9:52.00-- 100---- 692.0 --------997.1------- 1st
Scott--- 7--8:58.10 --85 ---623.1--------- 897.7------- 28th

Looks like Scott had a rough one. :-(

OK, so really gotta go to bed now...


'Four' your viewing pleasure


Who Group Time Landing Raw Score Normalised Score Place

Sven--- 4-- 9:54.70-- 100---- 694.7 --------1000------- 1st
Scott--- 5--9:51.30 --100 ---691.3--------- 994.4------- 32nd
Les---- 8-- 9:52.10-- 100---- 692.1 --------999.1-------- 3rd

Yay!