{"id":1635,"date":"2015-09-24T17:02:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T21:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/blog\/?p=1635"},"modified":"2015-09-24T17:02:56","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T21:02:56","slug":"summary-2015-fac-outdoor-champs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/summary-2015-fac-outdoor-champs\/","title":{"rendered":"Summary: 2015 FAC Outdoor Champs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack and I went down to Muncie\u00a0<\/span>on Wednesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>afternoon.\u00a0 We left Battle Creek around\u00a0<\/span>12:30<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and arrived about\u00a0<\/span>3:45<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 We were very surprised to see so many people already there!\u00a0 We had anticipated about 50 registered contestants (48 was the final tally) and about half of those seemed to be on the field for a beautiful afternoon and evening of flying.<\/p>\n

I love going to the AMA flying site: it’s a huge site for FAC events, it’s relatively close, and when we get a lot of people, it’s a really fun time.\u00a0 I attend four contests a year in Muncie and the FAC Outdoor Champs is the biggest.\u00a0 After checking the flight schedule for\u00a0<\/span>Thursday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>Friday<\/span><\/span>, I figured I could sell and fly on both days, since I only had to log flights in 4-5 events each day.\u00a0 And the flyers barely let me get started to test\u00a0<\/span>on Wednesday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>before they were handing me money (to trade for product!)\u00a0 Sales went well thought the contest;\u00a0 thank you to all of my customers.<\/p>\n

I thought had just a glimmer of hope in NoCal.\u00a0 At Geneseo, in July, I had put up a very respectable series of flights and was sitting in first place – until Wally Farrell came along and lost his model on a 9+minute single flight.\u00a0 NoCal is the total of three flights with no max flight time (the only FAC event with no max).\u00a0 His single flight time just beat me and I had to settle for 2nd.\u00a0 My hopes were that his new NoCal would not beat me this time.\u00a0 I again put up some respectable times in the morning and thought maybe the winds picking up might keep my scores in #2.\u00a0 In the middle of the day, wally had logged flights – and they were lower than mine!\u00a0 But by the end of the day, he had a different model top my scores and so did Mark Rzadka, so I settled for 3rd.\u00a0 Wally beat me again!<\/p>\n

I like to compete, but in unexpected ways.\u00a0 Currently, I fly Old Time Fuselage with a Pacific Ace Junior – not a regular Pacific Ace, but the little-know Junior.\u00a0 This is a 15″ span model that really looks like a Peanut sized plane.\u00a0 It is so small that it cannot fit into Embryo class.\u00a0 I’ve had it for 3 years or so and finally figured out how to make it fly.\u00a0 I’ve even been told that it can’t win.\u00a0 Well, my second and third flights were maxes with the last being over 5 minutes and me losing track of the model.\u00a0 I found two other lost models while searching, but couldn’t find mine.\u00a0 I think I ended up in 4th or 5th with the little plane.\u00a0 Someone DID find it\u00a0<\/span>Friday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>– after the heavy rains came through.<\/p>\n

\"20150918_140208\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My other big story involved my venerable Goodyear racer, the Falcon Special II.\u00a0 I designed and built this under the direction of Russ Brown in 1998 or 99 for publication in his Crosswinds newsletter.\u00a0 It did very well for me in 1999, earning 5 kanones.\u00a0 It was one of the planes that survived my lengthy hiatus and even one another kanone in 2012 – when it flew into a bean field and a found it by stepping on its wing.\u00a0 Since then it has been like an old favorite dog that shows flashes of its old self, but you just don’t have the heart to put it down.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Thursday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>night, I tried a test flight so that I would be ready for the race on Friday<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 Well, the model rolled right and nearly broke off a wing.\u00a0 With the field repair, the thing is really suffering now.<\/p>\n

I think there were 10 of us for the race!\u00a0 I made it through the first round easily; even Jack commented how well the plane was flying.\u00a0 In the second round, I survived, but the performance wasn’t the same.\u00a0 Before winding for the third round, I checked the motor – there was a big nick in the motor by the prop shaft.\u00a0 I decided to try to nurse the motor through the winding.\u00a0 I slowly wound, trying to ease in turns, until the strand snapped.\u00a0 Since I was going slowly, only the one strand broke, with its ends captivated by the knotted motor.\u00a0 I immediately stopped with the winder and put the prop on and started doing the old 1:1 ratio winder, turning the prop slowly and carefully.\u00a0 If I could just get a few more turns in, maybe some other hapless pilot would dork in before I fluttered to the ground.\u00a0 \u00a0After several turns, Jack says “it’s getting kinda tight!” – well, it popped.<\/p>\n

Now I had a choice:\u00a0 Let the other three pilots fly without me or just give my model a hearty toss and hope for the best.\u00a0 Tom Hallman captured the moment of launch for the four of us (that’s me closest to the camera).\u00a0 My tail heavy model did a large figure 9 into the ground – and a second later Jack Tisinai’s Hot Canary went in!\u00a0 If I had only stopped hand winding, I would have got third place!<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

The last (short) story:\u00a0 I am very happy to have placed second in Peanut.\u00a0 My no-bonus-point Barracuda could not catch Tom Hallman and his 30 bonus point Bleriot. But I was able to get a better score than Wally Farrell and his Floyd Bean – and he maxed!\u00a0 Placing between these two is not an easy task!<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a wonderful contest, the last big one of the year.\u00a0 I had a great time with friends and realized that I have a bit of a Zen attitude about flying – whatever happens, happens.\u00a0 As my flying buddy, Chris Boehm says, “a day flying is better than a day without flying!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack and I went down to Muncie\u00a0on Wednesday\u00a0afternoon.\u00a0 We left Battle Creek around\u00a012:30\u00a0and arrived about\u00a03:45.\u00a0 We were very surprised to see so many people already there!\u00a0 We had anticipated about 50 registered contestants (48 was the final tally) and about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-builds","category-customers","category-events","category-products"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}