Re: Re: Rantoul, IL Record trials (and fun fly!) [1 Attachment]
This is being sent to the village of Rantoul as a writeup of the event:
Rantoul FF Record Trials Event report
Saturday October 17th was a very cold and windy day. There was a hard frost overnight and the temperature outside when I arrived at 7:30am was hovering at 33 degrees. I entered the hanger and was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that it was a relatively balmy 59 degrees. The temperature did creep up during the day outside and inside, reaching into the 60’s inside. Not exactly record-setting weather, but warmer than the mines I’m told.
We had ten entrants total, with several flying from practically sun up to past sun down. Being late in the season, the sun was low on the horizon and this made conditions somewhat challenging for the lighter stuff. There is a good deal of solar gain through the windows on the hanger door and it heats up the cement floor causing some turbulence. F1Ds struggled to gain altitude, sometimes finding these incredible thermals, but more often finding down drafts.
On one LPP flight, Dudley Parker was caught between the forces of good and evil. His plane was flying in too wide a circle and was seemingly going to crash into the hanger doors when it was like the hand of God reached out and gently pushed it up and away. It would gain six feet in the air by the door as it was rising, then reach 180 degrees in the circle and hit air that pushed it down and widened the circle significantly. Again and again this happened before it finally ran out of power and came down.
The wind outside started out 10-15 mph and by noon it was a pretty steady 20 mph. The hanger has some air infiltration issues and the drift was a factor in places. There was one odd time where I was in a corner and had a decent flight with hardly any drift at all, while LeoP had a flight blow from one end of the hanger to the other. Towards the end of the day, the wind died down, the turbulence mostly died down and drift was very minimal. I had a flight that, while not particularly good, was the best of the day at 16:31. It required quite a bit of pole steering at 43-44’ range, trying to avoid the lights.
This is the first time an event has been held in the hanger since 1985. It was nice to have two individuals in attendance who had flown here before, both Jim Richmond and Jeff Annis. Photos from the August 1985 INAV are a bit unclear, but show the lights to be the same. Jim didn’t recall the sprinklers and a comparison of the photos shows that they are new. For larger models they are not a huge deal, but I suspect that they will be more problematic for ministicks.
Overall the site shows promise.
Received on Thu Oct 22 2015 - 14:47:51 CEST
This archive was generated by Yannick on Sat Dec 14 2019 - 19:13:48 CET