2011 DLG Contest

On August 27 (much preferred) or 28 (weather day if the 27th is swamped with rain or steadily over 20 mph wind) 2011 there will be a Hand Launch Glider contest at Jirik and also a Round Robin Up-Start (mini hi-start or lo-start) contest to start with, on the field we'll be at the Blaine Ave field behind the new Jirik office/garage complex.

Cost: $4 for entering the Round Robin, and the take will be distributed to the first, second and third placers. I’ll bring dollars in case some have only fives or larger. No entry fee for the DLG contest. I’ll have paper clips and tape for attaching a paper clip tow hook to your plane if you haven’t already; works great.

Round Robin rules follow. It will be run first to get things started, people warmed up, etc. Anyone can hand launch in a Round Robin contest if they prefer, or for instance if both competitors at any stage of the contest agree. Since the Up-Start will launch a plane higher than most DLG launchers can reach, that might help someone decide, but, again, any two who are flying against each other can mutually decide to hand launch. This was a big success last year.

Here are Tim Bennett’s rules (Tim runs these contests in Dallas every third Saturday).

Round Robin

For smaller groups we fly what we call the round robin. We set out two or more upstarts and just have each flyer fly one flight head to head against each other flyer on the field; last guy down wins. No organization is required; it is a case of pick your victim. Each pair flies until there is a winner. If both sky out, they must decide between themselves to go for a spot landing or re-launch. A matrix is used for scoring. Each flyer's name is written in a row and a column. A W or L is recorded on each flyer's row after each flight in the column corresponding to his opponent. I just put a clipboard with the matrix on it on the ground near the launch area and the contestants fill in their results themselves and can easily see whom they need to fly against. The guy with the most W's on his row wins. Ties are resolved on the basis of head to head results (a flyoff). We have done this with up to ten and it is a lot of fun.

DLG Contest The DLG contest will be an introductory sort of contest, so we will have one or two flight groups (up to 15 fliers per group), depending on the number of fliers, and eight ten-minute rounds, one for each of the F3K tasks. The first round will be the ladder task in which first goal is 30 seconds, the second 45, and so on up to two minutes, with the next goal only available after reaching the preceding one. The second round will be 5 two-minute flights in a ten-minute round (turnaround time important here since it is impossible to get in five twos in ten minutes). The third round will be all-up-last-down, three minute max (the round will take more than ten minutes because of the 30 second landing allowance and 15 more seconds needed to get ready for the next launch). Fourth is Poker, in which you choose the number of seconds you will fly before you launch each time (unless you don’t make your time, in which case you try again to make it) Five flights that count are allowed. F ifth is 1 2 3 4 minute flights, any order. Sixth is three threes, only six launches allowed. Seventh is Last and Next to Last Flights, four min. maxes. Eighth is Last Flight Only, five minute max. The letters of the rounds as labeled in the F3K rules will be in the following order: D G C E H F B A

Note that fliers tend to not all like D and E, that is, the ladder and Poker, so you might think about them a bit. For instance, there are fifty extra seconds in the ladder window, so you don’t have to be in a turnaround rush, and you can fail to make your 30 second flight and still have a chance to make all of them inside the window. It might be well to launch full on even for the 30 second flight since sink can happen. While guys have called 9:59 in Poker and made it, most fliers choose 1:15 or so for at least the first flight, and sometimes don’t increase that very much. However, you want to fill the ten minutes with as much flight time as you can, and only five flights count. Your timer keeps you up on how much time is left in the window for the last couple of flights, so you can announce your time accordingly, presuming you don’t have to make a previously missed time.

Field boundaries will be marked, and all launching and landing must be within the boundaries. A recording will be played that will announce the round three minutes before, then two, then one, then countdown to the launch, then each minute during the round, then countdown until the end.

Hitting another contestant (except your timer) with a plane will cost 100 points unless the strike occurs on launch, in which case the round is scored zero.

Each round will be normalized and standings will be published after each round if possible. If there are two flight groups or more, each flier will be distributed among the groups such that he will fly with every other contestant as many times as any other. The scoring program used does this automatically.

We will follow the FAI F3K rules as much as possible. They are found at:
www.fai.org/aeromodelling/system/files/SC4_Vol_F3_Soaring_10_Rev.pdf

It is a good idea to read these rules before coming to the contest, but the essentials will be covered at the pilots’ meeting. The HLG part of the rules begins on page 24 of the document, and the 8 tasks are described starting on page 28. Note that it is important to use the 2010 rules, since some changes were made to the previous edition, particularly regarding what counts as a landing in bounds. You can stand in bounds and catch your model even if at the moment of the catch the model is outside the boundary line, but a model that comes to rest outside the boundary cannot count as in bounds just because you can stand in bounds and retrieve the model. Also, the model hitting trees or grass stems and other natural stuff (not a person) while in flight does not count as an end to the flight, but hitting a person or a manmade object such as a car, canopy or tent does.

Your worst round will be dropped, and there won’t be a flyoff, at least not this time, but if this kind of contest catches on in these parts, we’ll be having bigger contests with flyoffs that will include the top 6 or 10 contestants from the preliminary rounds. If we get to that point we’ll have to award trophies made of wood or glass, but for this first one there will be certificates.

Every flier will need a timer/spotter. That means that if there aren’t enough people to time/spot for everyone in a round, we will have to have more than one group. Try to arrange a timer/spotter in advance. If you can bring a non-flying timer/spotter it could help. Some guys’ wives time/spot for them. Timer/spotters don’t only time. It is the object of each timer/spotter to endeavor as diligently and honestly as possible to help his flier to maximize his points in a round, even if that means the timer/spotter arranges his own loss of a place in the winners’ circle. This is one of the most sportsmanship-based sports for that reason. It reminds me of Bobby Jones calling his own moving of his ball with his club when preparing to hit it even though no one else saw it, and then losing the match by one stroke. The timer/spotter has a primary goal of protecting his flier from danger such as errant launches, and then timing accurately, but he also tells his flier where other planes are and whether they are rising or sinking, that is, guides him to thermals that he might not see, suggests how he might better fly a thermal he is in, by moving more to the left or right, upwind or down, for instance, even tells him in which direction to launch to get to a thermal, and finally gives a clear countdown to the end of the working time so his flier can nail the time exactly. HLG timer/spotters take great pride in having their flier do as well as humanly possible.

Al Nephew