October 2010 DARTS Club Contest
Sunday October 17, 2010
DARTS Field, Fairborn, Ohio
Today DARTS flew a club contest using the unlimited man-on-man format.
The weather began in the 50's but warmed up nicely into the mid 60's.
We had roughly 5 mph breezes that progressed SW to W to NW and even N
wind after the contest ended. It was mostly bright sun with very light
clouds only in the morning. Due to Big10 football the evening before we
elected to start at 11 AM. After 5 rounds of 10 min tasks with 3
inch/point the competitors achieved the following scores (I've put the
plane names down but this is from memory and I apologize for errors):
Here are some highlights:
Based on purely random seeding Ron, Marc and Jerry all flew in the
separate flight groups in round 1. Each of the top 3 handily won their
first rounds and never looked back. They flew together in the top group
for the next 4 rounds with very, very consistent scores. They stayed
within a dozen points of each other the whole contest and somehow kept
this 1, 2, 3 order through rounds 2-5.
The clouds in the first hour or so of the contest were something that I
don't personally remember ever seeing. A relatively high consistent
pattern of small cumulus "puff ball" clouds with extremely regular wisp
tails trailing down almost vertically with a slight bend perhaps due to
a gentle wind shear. I left the hi-def camera at home today and I'm
kicking myself for it.
I timed for Don Harris in round 2 while he chased lift down wind at
about 250 ft up. Although he caught little puffs of buoyant air he
never quite managed to get up and out. He managed to get close to 6 1/2
minutes with the bulk of it scratching for lift at 100 feet and
unfortunately didn't make it back to the field boundaries to score
points that round.
I hope the contest went well and a good time was had by all. On a
personal note this was my first time to CD a DARTS contest and enjoyed
doing it and would like to thank the competitors for a gentle "break in
period." In any case I know we all got to enjoy some spectacular
weather considering it was mid October in Ohio.
Skye Malcom CD
Final scores are list below:
round by round scores are
HERE
place |
name |
score |
model |
1 |
Ron Mong |
5455 |
Pike Perfect |
2 |
Mart Gellartt |
5452 |
Xplorer |
3 |
Jerry Shape |
5451 |
Pike Perfect (Supra?) |
4 |
Skye Malcom |
4279 |
Eraser |
5 |
David Rice |
4068 |
Mantis |
6 |
Mark Groves |
3997 |
Paragon |
7 |
Don Harris |
3384 |
Dragonfly Strong |
8 |
Gavin Trussell |
3247 |
Supra |
9 |
Greg Bell |
1431 |
Super V |
10 |
Ken Rice |
1305 |
Vista |
|