The Wind conditions were very good, light winds, but as usual across the track. There was a slight bias towards a direction but the pattern could be flown either way.
We, the Aussie's, watched everyone of the finals flights. Obviously everyone had good practice for the final schedule, and were flying well. It was the styles that was interesting.
Onda, the
Paysant-
Leroux were HUGE, they had to be easily pushing the 60 degree box marker. But obviously this had no effect
on the scores. The Austrian, Gerhard
Mayr, to our boys mind, flew brilliantly. Within the rules, not too big or small, with a very controlled flight of constant speed and precision. He flew very level, very technically correct. He is the guys with the unusual little extra-fins on the fin. See pictures below in previous post. In our mind, he should have been in the top three. His electric engine was
superb, very quite and just a light hum sound.
Next to comment on is
Quique Somenzini,
again flew brilliantly. Fairly open pattern, his rolls in the pattern were similar to everyone
elses, slow and long, but in the last unknown where they had a vertical square 8 with half roll in the middle (see photos Unknown Schedule 2) he
cleverly tightened up the radius and quicken the roll rate to keep the
maneuver to a reasonable size. Just about
everyone else using a slow roll, made a square rectangle, and would have gone into the clouds - if there were any!
Quique is one of those
flyers who are able to keep the plane absolutely level. His rolling circles and loops were brilliant, on the last unknown he was the only person to go reverse direction on the wind. The reason being, he told
Steve, was that the snaps could be done into the wind with more control. In the Aussie's minds
Quique would have been a good bet to win the event. We are
devastated and that he has been robbed to be given 7
th place. As we said to
quique at the banquet, now you know what the
Aussie feel like.....
Onda flew the same style as Christophe, huge, very large radius' with long smooth rolls. His rolling circles were very wide and deep. His ability to fly the plane like this is amazing. All the
Japanese all seemed to fly very level. (Because of their training no doubt). The only question on this style "can it be flown at 150m and inside the box, as the rules state?" we think not! But as at most world championships, the guys will copy or follow the person's style who is scoring the maximum!
Suzuki and
Akiba flew very similar styles to each other, slightly smaller than
Onda, but still reasonably large. To the boys, they still flew reasonably well with just small errors creeping in on the harder
maneuvers, such as the rolling loops and circles.
Christophe and Benoit flew the same type of aircraft with similar styles. Their patterns were HUGE! or bigger! To the
Aussies, the wings were always 15 degrees out of level, at least, (we know this looks right, because that is how most of the sportsman
flyers want to fly, when you are training them. of course the rules say, wings out of level is a major area of downgrade) One of the areas that was very questionable, was the stall turns. The aircraft never, ever stalled, (so it was never going to flop) and seemed to be
driving over with
alot of throttle. You can see this by the smoke trail at the top of the turn and the fact that the plane turned over very quickly.
Radius and rolls were so big and long that there was little time for straight lines between individual parts of the
maneuvers and between some
maneuvers. The snaps of
alot of the
flyers were questionable, with very little elevator being used. So is the case with Christophe and Benoit. (but hey if they get scored for it, why would they want to change!) and example was in the two snaps reversed in the Unknowns where the aircraft wanted to finish
nosedown, this being a direct result of very little elevator to pitch the nose up at the
beginning of the snap. To
Steve, the snap looks like one wing throws itself over.
To the
Aussies, the scores left us amazed, unsurprised, but amazed. To us we thought they would have finished much further down the results. especially Benoit. It seems strange that one person can dominate the scoring in this type of company for all rounds, including the
preliminaries. Christophe won every round of the comp bar one. Especially when the pattern is flown technically incorrect. wings out of level by at least 15 degree, box
infringements, lack of straight lines,
questionably snaps with no pitch, driven over stall turns, wings not square in vertical lines when there is a crosswind (so you
don't have to yaw the model into breeze when pulling level) Spins becoming
unstalled when the nose drops so far.
Jason
Shulman flew his tighter style that we saw in Australia. He also seems to have a
tendency to fly wing down (as most of the US team do and have done, except
quique) On his last flight of the comp he also hit the famous
Darty Fence when landing.
The German
flyer,
Bernd Beschorner, fly brilliantly. Technically correct, very level, within the rules of the box. His only fault was perhaps having difficulty landing the snaps.
What is sad for the Aussies, is that the World Championship title should be the best on the day and this title should have been someone
elses, we have all spent lots of money and hoped for the opportunity to do our best, and when you make it to the final 10, and out fly people, you expect to get the podium. That was
definitely not the case here. We feel for some of the other pilots.
