Flights at Nationals

[calgoddard]

DoctaDave -

Understood about the rubber motors breaking. There is an old adage in the sport of indoor duration flying. It goes like this: "If you are not breaking rubber motors, you are not winding enough." You did a great job in WS at Nationals.

It looks like you are on the Mira Loma team. Congratulations on your teams' second place overall finish at Nationals.

Did you happen to see how Troy's WS flights went at Nationals in Nebraska? I saw their WS team at the 2015 SoCal State finals, and but for two unfortunate events, that WS team would probably have finished 2nd, or possibly even 1st, in WS at that competition, against a very tough field.

[bernard]

I ended up breaking 2 motors after this flight, and I was about 1 winder turn from reaching the max when they both broke, so I had about 20 seconds to get another flight up and that wasn't enough time to wind a motor to 2500 turns. Luckily my first official flight went very well so I wasn't too unhappy with only getting in 1 official flight.

If you aren't doing it already, I recommend winding your second motor during your first flight. I didn't and had the exact same issue as you - I broke two motors too! In my case, getting that second flight would have helped a ton since my first flight climbed about 2/3 of the way.

[DoctaDave]

DoctaDave -

Understood about the rubber motors breaking. There is an old adage in the sport of indoor duration flying. It goes like this: "If you are not breaking rubber motors, you are not winding enough." You did a great job in WS at Nationals.

It looks like you are on the Mira Loma team. Congratulations on your teams' second place overall finish at Nationals.

Did you happen to see how Troy's WS flights went at Nationals in Nebraska? I saw their WS team at the 2015 SoCal State finals, and but for two unfortunate events, that WS team would probably have finished 2nd, or possibly even 1st, in WS at that competition, against a very tough field.

Thanks for the kind words.

I saw troy practicing and it seemed their plane had no issue climbing to the max ceiling height. I believe that they went for a wing bonus just not sure which one and it seemed like they were getting decent times. I'm pretty sure they got 8th however I don't know if their official flight went as well they had hoped.

[DoctaDave]

I ended up breaking 2 motors after this flight, and I was about 1 winder turn from reaching the max when they both broke, so I had about 20 seconds to get another flight up and that wasn't enough time to wind a motor to 2500 turns. Luckily my first official flight went very well so I wasn't too unhappy with only getting in 1 official flight.

If you aren't doing it already, I recommend winding your second motor during your first flight. I didn't and had the exact same issue as you - I broke two motors too! In my case, getting that second flight would have helped a ton since my first flight climbed about 2/3 of the way.

For the first few minutes I was watching my plane to make sure there wasn't any odd behavior and then when it had completed a decent portion of the descent, I went back to wind my next motor. I wasn't even aware that the plane drifted until my partner came and told me.

[DoctaDave]

Here's my flight. Sorry if the quality is bad, as the video is still processing on youtube, but after an hour or so after this post goes up, the video quality should improve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkgIUvZQvPs

Enjoy.

Well I guess I must've uploaded the video in standard definition without realizing it. Here's the better version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ldOesCd9p0

[bernard]

Well I guess I must've uploaded the video in standard definition without realizing it. Here's the better version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ldOesCd9p0

Thanks for the videos! It's great to be able to see your plane :)

[calgoddard]

DoctaDave -

Thanks for posting the high quality video of your great flight at Nationals.

Judging by the decent rate of your airplane, and the height when it hit the wall (about 6 feet), you probably didn't lose more than about 5 seconds due to the collision. I doubt you lost 10 - 15 seconds.

What place did you finish? Would 5 more seconds have changed where you placed?

Again, you did an outstanding job getting your airplane near the ceiling. It doesn't look like it ever hit a beam or the ceiling when it was flying at very high altitude.

Thanks for the report on Troy. I think the airplane they flew at the 2015 SoCal state finals qualified for the 7 cm wing bonus. It would be logical for that team to fly the same airplane at Nationals in Nebraska.

[bernard]

Their team was second, with a time of 4:37.82, and first place was 4:54.74. Both teams had excellent times that were many seconds over the teams that placed below them. The next highest placing team with the same wing chord as them had a time of 4:12.50.

[DoctaDave]

Yeah it probably wasn't 10 seconds after watching the video, but in the end it didn't matter as I got 2nd and the first place team was about 17 seconds ahead of my flight. My plane seemed only inches under the rafters during the cruise portion of its flight although it's difficult to judge distances from that far.

Had I gotten a second flight in I may have been able to improve my time by increasing the launch torque to have the first two circles of my flight stay at a constant altitude before climbing, and then launch a little closer to the center so I wouldn't have a collision. I think these two changes if executed properly could have pushed my time to the top, or at least closed the gap by a considerable amount.

[bjt4888]

DoctaDave,
Super flight! Thanks for the video. Did you launch at 0.6 in oz with the .081" rubber?

Brian T.