Re: Re: 2012 F1D World Championship Statistical Analysis

From: Ron Patten <ronald.patten_at_att.net>
Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:57:32 -0700 (PDT)

Nick,
 
Thanks for the explanation!
RP
 

________________________________
 From: Nick Ray <lasray_at_gmail.com>
To: Indoor_Construction_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Indoor_Construction] Re: 2012 F1D World Championship Statistical Analysis
  

 
 
 
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 - 13:57:34 CEST