BMFA F3F Nationals 2021 (Wales)

[Greg Dakin]

Apologies guys, I put my name down for this event, but have now realised that it conflicts with my second Covid jab date (doh!), so sadly I'll not be able to join the party

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!! 

Cheers, 

Greg

[knewt]

I’ve been watching the forecast and doing my special wind dance, but nothing encouraging has happened. 
So, apologies, I’ll save my mileage and try again for the league reserve in a few weeks. 

[f3fman]

1 hour ago, knewt said:

I’ve been watching the forecast and doing my special wind dance, but nothing encouraging has happened. 
So, apologies, I’ll save my mileage and try again for the league reserve in a few weeks. 

Can you post a video of your special wind dance please Kevin ?  ;-)

[knewt]

36 minutes ago, f3fman said:

Can you post a video of your special wind dance please Kevin ? 

Hardly seems worth it, it doesn’t bloody work. Same problem with my cricket rain dance. Don’t know why I bother

[f3fman]

1 minute ago, knewt said:

Hardly seems worth it, it doesn’t bloody work. Same problem with my cricket rain dance. Don’t know why I bother

But I feel after this pandemic we all need a good laugh

[Tone-the-glider]

16 hours ago, knewt said:

I’ve been watching the forecast and doing my special wind dance, but nothing encouraging has happened. 
So, apologies, I’ll save my mileage and try again for the league reserve in a few weeks. 

Agreed would have been nice to meet up with everyone. But maybe can be rearranged for another time.  Count me out also.

[mtreble]

For those who are still in the game - meet at 9am tomorrow morning at the T-junction.

[Andy_B]

well we had up to 10m/s and big thermals , it was even worth the walk 

[wookman]

Did you manage to get any racing in?

[Andy_B]

think we’ve done 12 rounds 

[mtreble]

We met at the slope in the morning to legal wind blowing on to Mickey's. We promptly set up the course and managed to get in 11 rounds in wind up to 10m/s.

Tomorrow is not looking so promising, but you never know!

Results after day 1.

1 Pete Gunning 8830.47
2 Andy Burgoyne 8766.33
3 John Philips 8693.81
4 Mark Treble 8585.73
5 Rich Bago 8565.89
6 Graeme Mahoney 8306.61
7 Mike Shellim 8295.88
8 Keith Wood 8277.96
9 Paul Stubley 8248.47
10 Ian Mason 8223.82
11 Dave Rumble 8078.48
12 Jason Bioletti 8050.95
13 Les Woods 8037.32
14 Bruce Hudson 7938.05
15 Aleix Ingles Elias 7897.82
16 Nigel Whitchalls 7784.81
17 Mike Evans 7708.18
18 Jon Edison 7620.68
19 John Treble 2270.65

Fastest time: 36.21 by John Philips in round 8
 

[Ian F3F]

12 rounds in warm weather, a great days enjoyment and racing. Well done to Mark and Graeme for keeping the middle going. I think everyone had a slice of bad air and good during the day. 

 

  Sorry I won't be able to make tomorrow but I had a blast steering the Harrier round. 

 

Ian

[Graeme_M]

Great couple of days on Mickey's, thanks to Mark for organising everything and keeping us in check.

Congrats to the top 3very well flown.

Results spreadsheet attached... hopefully!

G

F3F_Scores_V1_1.xls

[mtreble]

Unfortunately, day 2 didn't happen. Light winds on to Mickey's allowed for some sports flying, but we decided to call it a day at mid-day as there was no sign of improvement on the hill or in the forecast.

Thanks to everyone who came and helped. After a long f3f drought, it's great to be back.

I am sure there will be some photographs appearing soon.

[Andy_B]

It was a great weekend to catch up with everyone again ,thanks to all the organisers and helpers .

 

andy

[Peter G]

A perfect weekend! It was great to get flying all day on Saturday, summer F3F in shorts. The wind picked up through the day but the lift didn't really. You needed decent air to go sub 50 and a thermal to go sub 40. Lots of fun on the slope though.

First time in a pub for over a year Saturday night was very enjoyable too and felt remarkably safe & civilised.

Shame we didn't get flying today, but the bonus was dinner with a view at Tebay and home already. Thanks to Mark & Graham for CDing and  T9 & MKS for the sponsorship Great to see everybody 

[oipigface]

Another weekend another brace of crises! I know exactly what happened to the green one, and I have spent the afternoon so far replicating the various configurations of ballast in the red one and measuring the position of the CG for each. The red one you will recall behaved just as you would expect it to behave if the CG were too far rearwards. (Much too far!) On launch for R5, it pitched up and stalled, then continued to misbehave while I held in down elevator and fed in as much down trim as possible. The plane was flying fast and rising in strong lift. I tried to apply brakes, causing it to loop, so I applied the brakes very, very cautiously. It slowed down sufficiently that I felt I could land it safely, but was still gaining height, so I decided to trying steering it behind the slope where with any luck there would be less lift and I would be able to land it even though I wasn’t able to apply any further down elevator. Fortunately, this worked. (Thanks to Les for stopping the car that threatened to drive between me and it at the crucial moment!)

When I maidened the plane a couple of weeks ago, the wind was light and I used no ballast. This afternoon the CG was at 99.2 aft of the LE with no ballast. In rounds 2-4 on Saturday, I flew it with just one brass slug (c160g) in the front part of the wing ballast tube. Today, this moved the CG back to 99.4. In R5, the wind had freshened. I put another 2 slugs in the opposite wing tube, making 480g altogether. This afternoon, doing the same moved the CG to 99.9. Many people fly Pitbull 2’s successfully with the CG 5mm further back than this!

So I am still at a loss to understand what went wrong. There is no reason to suppose that the CG on Saturday morning with 3 slugs in would be any different from what it was this afternoon. One rather outlandish possibility is that something occurred to induce a load of up elevator at the moment Les launched it. You would then have to believe that it remained like this until after it landed. When I picked it up there were a couple of mm of down trim in it, so you would also have to believe that between landing and me picking it up, whatever it was induced the up elevator stopped. Returning the trim to zero realigns the elevator with the rest of the tailplane. You would also have to believe that almost every other aspect of the control worked as expected. 

Now, of course, I’m dead scared to do anything with it!

The green one’s problem was caused by absent-mindedness. When I want to work on a setup, I always copy the existing one to a new model and edit it there. If I’m happy with the new one, I’m supposed to delete the old one.........

[Phil.Taylor]

loose/dislodged noseweight and/or battery?

stray/random flight mode with lots of up elevator?

[f3fman]

how about one of the elevators got knocked upwards before launch, the wiper got stuck and it didn't return to neutral ?

 

[oipigface]

10 hours ago, Phil.Taylor said:

loose/dislodged noseweight and/or battery?

stray/random flight mode with lots of up elevator?

There is so little room in the nose of a Pitbull 2, that even if something were loose, it wouldn’t move far. As it is, everything ias securely taped in place.

I checked on the slope the idea that somehow I had an active switch that I knocked on launch. Went through all the switches one by one. There was nothing. That doesn’t eliminate the possibility that two or more switches might activate something funny, but that seems very unlikely. The control system seemed to be working  throughout the flight and the plane responded in expected ways to all control inputs.

9 hours ago, f3fman said:

how about one of the elevators got knocked upwards before launch, the wiper got stuck and it didn't return to neutral ?

 

if this had happened, it would have rolled as well. Unless both elevators were knocked equally. It would also have had to get knocked back again after landing. The elevator halves were both moving freely after landing. To check that ‘neutral’ was neutral, returned the trim to 0. There was no sign of anything unusual the movement of the surfaces.

If a wiper were stuck, I doubt if I would have been able to put all that down stick and trim in.