Tuesday, July 28, 2009

27 July 2009

Practice / final setup continues with the awesome weather. The winches were also calibrated today to ensure that they comply with competition (FAI) standards. With the “new” winch rules, the powerful (and very, Very heavy) batteries will need to be charged after every second launch. We understand that the WC organisers will have a power cable running the length of the flight line for this purpose & using the 20 amp battery chargers this should not take too long, but we will “wait & see”.



The practice day was good, but rather tiring – we (well, "me" in particular ) were still exhausted from the day before, the heat & humidity claiming the rest. Michelle fitted our her spare model & the rest performed lots of launches to assess the winches. Craig & Dion flew a number of distance laps to assist fine setting of the models for altitude/air density. Launch settings, etc. being compared & shared to ensure each model was optimal. The highly controversial finish of the new CL's are creating a definite edge for the distance & speed tasks over the other models, improving even further after applying the tensoids.


We were invited to our hosts house (think “Grand Design meets Ikea”) for a barbecue & some “real” Weis-beer, all overlooking their own massive flying field with lush ankle-high grass. We have reached the conclusion that we are in a flying paradise: walking distance to the flying fields, green grass as far as the eye can see, & great (no, read that as "brilliant") beer. After another busy practice/setup day we closed in for the night, with the intent of flying at 07h00 tomorrow morning for “dead-air” conditions & also allow time for the trip to the famous Red Bull Hanger 9.

Parting comment for the day (from Dion "Denny" Liebenberg): “you can see the planes better in left-hand rather than right-hand thermal turns”.
Parting comment from Tigger: "damb clutch was not were I expected it to be" after parking the van into a bench

5 comments:

Evan Shaw said...

Hi Lionel

Thanks for the updates.

Can you please elaborate on the controversial finish and tensoids????

Evan

Anonymous said...

Can see the WeisBeer is a hit from the spelling. With enough you should be able to write fuently in German :-)
Cheers
Gert

Tigger said...

The team are using one of the brand new carbon fabrics in the construction. Even using standard mold techniques, this provides for a muich stiffer surface & obviously superior finish, which in combination with the tensoids that reduce surface tension should give us a definate edge in speed & distance tasks due to less flex, more accurate reproduction of the airfoil & somewhat lower Cd coefficient as a result

Tigger said...

Craig mentioned that this new fabric is only available through ECC in Germany at the moment & has not gone into full production yet. We were fotunate to get some of the pre-prod line that has reached satisfactory market quality

Anonymous said...

So have the RSA team the only Ceres Lift with this material at the moment?
Cheers
Gert