The forecast was again on the ‘iffy’ side for this event, but still 7 pilots turned out to compete. On arrival the wind was fairly strong, gusting to mid teens from the NW.
Winch lines were set up for the prevailing wind and CD Paul Freeman stated the event as 3/4 of 10 minute rounds, followed by top 2 flying in a 2 rounds fly off.
The wind had subsided quite a bit and flights were in the 4 – 7 minute range. Towards the end of round 1, the rain came in and there was a mad dash to cover models and get transmitters out of the rain. After about 10 minutes, the rain cleared and battle commenced again. Asa result the event was dropped to 3 rounds. In Rd 2 Keith hada brain fart and at 7.5 minutes opened his brakes to head for the landing. A polite questioning of ‘what the hell are you doing’ from his timekeeper and Keith shut the brakes and managed to fly out to 1 second off the max. In the same slot, Sam was rapidly coming down and hit a small bump of lift which he worked hard for several minutes to also fly to 1 second off the max! Probably the best flight of the day. Also in Rd 2, Loudon had the first wing failure I’ve seen in quite a while, losing his Elan, but heading down to the car to rig another model to finish out the event – one hardcore flyer!
Round 3 and lift was patchy and hard to find, with only Keith finiding much lift.
After the 3 rounds, the scores were as follows:
This made the fly off between Keith & Sam. Rd 1 and Keith got away with Sam working hard, but landing well ahead of Keith. Rd 2 was an almost carbon copy of Rd1, so with Keith taking both, he wins the 2020 Club Open Thermal – Congratulations!
