Oct - Rcsoaring.com

At the end of Round 2 I was flying 98.99 percent of perfect and was in 55th place! Youhave got to be kidding! Someone patted me on the shoulder and said, “Welcome tothe big leagues.”team’s towmen are as good as theseguys, magic happens. An F3J tow isquite different from a TD winch tow. Thegoal in F3J is to stay on tow for as littletime as possible. The monofilamentline can be stretched, a lot. Before thelaunch, it is pre-stretched. It appears thatmuch, if not most of the initial part, of thelaunch is the mono trying to un-stretchitself. Then a very, very quick dip at abouttwo seconds to super accelerate theplane before the line returns to normallength and then hard up to vertical. Mostthermal duration pilots stop pulsing thewinch right before the ping. In F3J, thetowmen are pulling hard right through theping. In my opinion, trophies should alsobe awarded to the towmen.We put a stop watch on Daryl’s plane onlaunch. Daryl was off tow in a little overtwo seconds and coasted a hundredfeet higher than other teams planesthat were on tow for over four seconds.Unbelievable!Dave Kalamen and Kelly Johnson alsotowed for Team New Zealand. They notonly blew up a New Zealand carbon PikePerfect on tow (broken fuselage), theytowed New Zealand to a third place Teamfinish in the World Championships.During our practice day and the first fourrounds of the Cup we damaged a littlehardware.First day of practice, AJ was standingnext to a launch line that ripped hisplane out of his hands by a surpriseunannounced launch and it fell on a wingtip. A little CA, a little spackle, and almostas good as new.Daryl damaged his first model inpractice. The stab failed under enormousline tension in very extreme conditions.Daryl pointed out to me later that thistype of problem happens at a WorldChampionship on the practice days asmodels are being optimized, tow systemsoptimized, the entire team is finallytogether and working in harmony, and12 R/C Soaring Digest