Re: Re: 2012 F1D World Championship Statistical Analysis

From: Nick Ray <lasray_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 16:37:46 -0400

I supposed is good that people are talking about F1D. However, I do wish
more attention was paid to how World Champs are run and flown. There are a
number of variables outside of the model and rubber than greatly impact an
individuals results.

A defending world champion fly's with a major advantage they are their own
team. A national team is required to have all three of its members fly
within the round. In Belgrade this meant that at least one team member was
going to have to fly in the worse air. A team manager can either choose to
share the best air by rotating the flight order or by giving to the best
air to competitor they think will do the best. The later case is what the
US did. This means thats not all the members on a team have an equal
chance. The difference between Brett and John's high times could be
explained by the order that they flew in.

Secondly, mid-airs play a large part in the out come of the contest. They
can hurt if your at the end of a great flight or they can help by allowing
you to restart a bad flight. There were probably over 50 mid-airs in
Belgrade. I remember Ivan Treger having three in one round. There is no
trim flying during the rounds of the world championships. This means that
if you do trim fly in the morning or evening you are trimming the model in
air that is unlike what you will be flying in during the rounds. Judging by
Treger's constancy I doubt that the mid-airs helped him, but I know for
other competitors mid-airs restarted bad fights.

The third major variable is steering. For better or worse steering
typically speeds up the prop RPM. This means that the model climbs more
than what it was trimmed for and spins off more turns than what it was
trimmed to do. Depending on when one is forced to steer, the model may
climb into turbulent air around the disk at the top and then head for a
wall while hitting the ceiling, or it may dead stick 40 feet above the
floor because is average RPM was higher than expected.

Schram's winning flight was a no steer flight. I know that all of the US
team members would have preferred to not steer because of we wanted our
models to fly the profile we had trimmed for, but it never seemed to really
work out. To keep from steering in Belgrade everything has to be perfect,
the model, the rubber the launch spot, the wind and clouds outside as well
as the temperature. I think that no steer flights are more of a perfect
storm than anything that can be predicted consistently.

Maybe that will give some context to the discussion,

Nick



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Received on Thu Aug 30 2012 - 13:37:47 CEST