2014 South African Gliding Nationals

It has been a while since my last post.
Briefly, we had round 2 at Silverton Gliding Club. I enjoy the venue as it is quite challenging with a lot of trees all around the field. Should you miss the trees, there is also a huge dam to land in.
Round 2 saw only 2m gliders entering and that made for some good competition.
Congratulations to Bryan Paxton, a newcomer to F5J, who showed us all how it should be done. Herman posted the results on the MGA blog.

Round 3 was scheduled to take place at Snoopy's airfield in Randfontein on the 18th of May but was cancelled due to extremely poor weather conditions. Hopefully we can re-visit Snoopy's at a later event.

The 2014 Glider nationals are due to take place on the 14th to 16th of June at Africa Lawns near Delmas. Google co-ordinates are: 26°08'08.4"S 28°37'52.9"E Entry forms available for download  here: http://1drv.ms/1k1pgly
This year's event is going to be great. Please make an effort to enter.

F5J Round 1 - 2 Feb 2014

Can you believe we are one week from February? I nearly missed our first event!
We will be hosting the competition at GEMS.
Everyone is welcome to attend. If you would like to participate in the competition, please forward your name and SAMAA number to me so I can process your entry. (You can leave a comment below this post)  If you would like to know what F5J is all about, bring a camp chair, some snacks and enjoy the day's flying from the sidelines.

The normal will apply:

• We will fly provisional F5J rules
• You will need an altitude limiting device
• Entries close Thursday afternoon 31 January
• Arrive at 8, pilots briefing at 8:30, start comp no later than 9:00
• Entry fee R50.00

Now all I need to do is repair all the damaged gliders, see you there!

F5J 2013 Summary

We have just completed the 5th and final round of the F5J competition meetings.

I know that most pilots enjoyed the events and will probably be back for more in 2014. As the competitions were very informal I'm not going to concentrate on who won or lost, rather I would like to focus on the fun side of the events. To take the last event on Saturday 26 October as an example, we started the event at 09:00 and we all done by 12:00. To be fair, the windy conditions made it difficult to achieve full 10 min working time flights all the time. Add an hour for good flying conditions. We were still in time to have a braai and watch the rugby at home. Clearing the field took no longer than 10 minutes. No clumsy lines, winches, turnaround stakes or car batteries to lug around.

Some of the other disciplines I have attended, like F3B or F3K, places a lot of stress on an average pilot like myself. I am constantly amazed at the level of skill and expertise of the South Africans. For such a small model flying community we fare extremely well at most of the gliding world championships.

The point I'm getting at is that F5J, because of its provisional status, is very attractive to new and less skilled glider pilots. This may change as soon as it gains proper FAI status. At the moment it does not attract the crème de la crème of the local glider pilots as the other disciplines do.

F5J in Europe has a huge following, and I think for much the same reason. The Model Club of Trnava (MCT), in Slovakia has taken the initiative and have organized the F5J Inter Tour competition. It describes the procedures for allowing countries to stage and or enter the competition. More on the subject at their web site: http://www.trnavaf3j.sk/.

To make a long story short, I believe F5J to be the future of competitive model thermal duration flying. We are right here at the beginning of it all. Next year (2014) we should have more informal "practice" days and tighten up on the competition days.

If this recipe works well in Gauteng, I see no reason for other regions not to jump on the bandwagon. It would be wonderful to see a multitude of new faces at the 2014 Nationals.

Altis V4 - Now in stock

A new batch of the Altis V4 altitude loggers have just arrived.
Gone is the need for a separate display unit as the Altis V4 has an OLED screen to display information. The memory and other functionality has also been improved. The USB to Serial device is now on-board the device and the supplied cable connects straight to your PC. Go to Aerob Tec website for more specs and information.
Herewith a picture for size comparison with the Altis V3.

A bunch of these devices have been sold already, but I still have some in stock. Contact me if you need one.

F5J Scoring Application

There is a small app available to help you score individual flights. This will give you the points scored for each flight. There is no database to the app so you will have to log all your scores on a spreadsheet if you want to keep track of your progress.
This might also come in handy for producing scores for electric Postal competition.
Download the file here. Unzip the file and run. Remember that in F5J the scores are normalized.

F5J Scoring Flowchart

View here.

Competition Announcement

We're getting close to our next F5J competition. This one will be held at BERG (Bartlett Egg Radio Gliders) on Saturday 27 April. Flying will start around 09:00.
The field is located approximately 5km northwest of the M47 / N14 crossing near Krugersdorp.


View Larger Map
The remaining dates for this year are:

• 27 April
• 30 June
• 25 August
• 26 October

 Hope to see you all there!

F5J Round 1 Results

Thanks to all who made this another great event. 

Weather was warm and sunny and the wind favored the slightly heavier, molded gliders. We all had some good flying but the top guys seemed to have it all together. The race for top spot was between Gert and Johan with Johan taking the lead by a few points. Evan did well to finish in third against the big ships flying a Tsotsi. Well done guys!

My biggest hassle was hitting the landing spot, and I was not alone.

Many, many thanks to the girls that helped with timing and scoring chores.

Overall Score

Rank	Name	Score	Pcnt
1	Bruwer, Johan	4982.2	100
2	Nieuwoudt, Gert	4941.7	99.19
3	Shaw, Evan	4642.3	93.18
4	Brown, Gordon	3998.5	80.26
5	Williams, Ivan	3940.4	79.09
6	Jubber, Garin	3767.4	75.62
7	Wucherpfennig, Rouen	3614.5	72.55
8	Edmunds, Hugh	3356.9	67.38
9	Meyer, Melgard	2934.5	58.9

Thermal activity was quite good as can be seen from the tight formation the picture below:

We had a good mix of gliders from modified Gentle Ladies, a Radian, a few Tsotsis right up to Explorer-E and a Pike. Johan's Pike launches vertically (well almost).

Wingman Gert:

Merke, gereed.......

Hugh and Gert really concentrating.

Discussing tactics?

If this looks like fun please join us for the next event 27 April 2013.