Pic of Russ at the fuelling table
Monday, July 27, 2009
F3D WC
The official website seems to be somewhat lacking. I got some feedback and photographs from the German RC Group site.
http://www.rc-network.de/forum/showthread.php?t=157502
It is in German but you can use Babelfish or Google translate to get an idea of what is going on. There are also numerous cool pics of the happenings.
Later
P
Sunday, July 26, 2009
F3D WC
Some results just in from Germany.
Robert van der Bosch is the new world champ with a new world record time of 56.33 sec!
The South African team of Paul, Trevor, Russel and Wayne did awesomely well to finish in 10th position out of 22 and ahead of traditionally strong teams like Canada and the UK.
The team also did exceptionally well in that there was 1 x 200 only out of 3 x 13 rounds flown and the team finished within 1-2 seconds of each other.
The team results were - 1USA, 2NED, 3GER, 4CZE, 5FRA, 6JPN, 7SWE, 8AUS, 9RUS, 10RSA, 11 UKR, 12CAN, 13GBR, 14ESP, 15ITL, 16GUA, 17MEX, 18BEL, 19NZL, 20GRE, 21POR, 22QAT.
The individuals were - 1 vd Bosch, 2Verano, 3Bridge, 4Flynn, 5 Freeman, 6Mucedola, 7Phelan, 8de la Vega, 9Murphy, 10 Quevedo ..... 36 Paul Usswald, 37 Trevor Budd, 38 Russel van der Westhuizen. Well done team!
Full results at www.wcf3d.de
Later
Peter
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
SA Pylon Racing Blog launched
SAMPRA (South African Miniature Pylon Racing Association) launches the new blog for racing in South Africa.
This is an interactive forum so comments and posts from all with an interest in speed will be welcomed. Also news, events, rules etc will be useful.
I will be posting the ic racing calendar and links to the rules in the near future as well as reports on the recent race meetings including the NATs at RMAC.
Just to start you off here is an excerpt from last years Nats report
Report on Pylon Racing National 2008
The combined Pylon Racing, Large Scale Aerobatics and Scale Nationals were held at RMAC over the Easter weekend. It has been some time since a combined national was held and it was great to see pilots from other disciplines and interests. The combined nature of the event meant that the event was spread over four days. It also meant that several people were able to compete in multiple disciplines, for example Trevor Budd who flew Pylon and Large Scale Aerobatics, as well as Noel Booysen who came all the way from Polokwane (Pietersburg), to fly Scale and Standard Quickies.
There were some familiar faces from other places - Clive McInnes and his dad Angus (who has not flown competitively for some time) were up from Durban and John and Gail Dorse up from Pietermaritzburg.
We were also very pleased to have a junior, Louis Moll, who is being assisted by Wayne Wilcox and Andre Cilliers in the Standard Quickies. Louis flew really well and improved with every flight.
The Standards Class was on Friday. This always produces some close racing, even though it is the slowest class and regarded by some pilots as practice for the events to follow. This is due to the fact that the engines are limited to standard .40 sport engines (front intake side exhaust). These run on standard fuel and turn a 9x6 prop at about 17000 -17500 RPM. The built up airframe planes are all of a similar speed and as such is a good place to start out in the racing game.
The McInnes Stable
After the racing on Friday afternoon, the SAMPRA AGM was held and several contentious issues were discussed at length. Firstly the introduction of 15% Nitro fuel for Hot Quickie was accepted as it will make the setup and running of the new generation of longer stroke racing engines less critical. In this respect we are now running full AMA 428 rules. The question of the composite construction and its attendant cost was debated at length, but it was decided that a decision on the legality of these airframes should be delayed for a year, until enough data on the performance of these airframes is obtained.
Saturday brought the turn of the Hot Quickies – these have the same airframes as the Standards, but with the specialist racing engines – Nelson, Jett and Profi are currently the engines of choice. These engines are also front intake, side exhaust .40 engines running on standard fuel, but they turn a prop of about 8.75 x 7-7.5 at about 19000 rpm. Unfortunately the weather did not co-operate... Note the black clouds… and were then forced to hide in the club house with all the other pilots until the rain passed Fortunately the weather broke and we were able to run 3 rounds of racing in the remainder of the slot time available to us.
In the very first heat Frans and Paul had a very unfortunate mid-air collision with both aircraft seriously damaged (actually, Frans’s was totally trashed and the wreckage landed in the catch net near young Louis in pylon 3 - he was wide awake after that!)
The rest of the racing was fast and clean with no other incidents
On Saturday night the banquet was held in Rodney Donaldson’s hanger at the Tedderfield Airpark. Although some faces were noticeably absent, those who were able to attend enjoyed a great meal and a really well organized evening. There were even pictures from the competition up until this time. To Frieda Donaldson and all the people (and family who didn’t have a choice) who were involved in the organization of this event, congratulations - it was superb.
Sunday was the turn of the Quarter Midgets, also known as QM40s. This is the class that has replaced the FAI or formula 1’s locally. These are very sleek and sexy aircraft based on some of the full size aircraft that have raced at Reno. They follow the AMA QM40 rules from America and use special racing motors that are designed for this class. Here we run fuel with 15% Nitro as per AMA rules and the engines turn a 7.4 x 7.8-8.0 prop at about 25000 RPM. In South Africa we use these aircraft to determine the pilots who will make up the FAI F3D pylon racing team. We do this as these QM 40 aircraft are only slightly slower than an F3D plane, but significantly easier to operate and the engines far less critical
Russell van der Westhuizen with his GR7 and Polecat from Bruce de Chastel in Australia.
The QM40s provided some fast and spectacular racing. Unfortunately I suffered from an excess of enthusiasm and over-rolled my Polecat on Pylon 1 – it made a rather large hole in the ground at about 250+ KPH!
Wayne and Trevor also had a mid-air meeting but due to great pilot skill both planes were able to be landed safely and both pilots were given a re-flight. (That why pilots who are serious about a team slot bring 2 planes)
The rest of the racing was less eventful but still very fast and spectacular. Times were about 80 seconds (fastest Trevor at 71 odd)
The results were:
1 – Trevor Budd
2 – Andre Nortje
3 – Paul Uswald
4 - Wayne Wilcox
5 - Andre Cilliers
On Monday we were able to race the remaining 3 rounds of hot quickie
The results were:
1 – Trevor Budd
2 – Andre Nortje
3 – John Dorse
4 - Peter Eagle
5 – Clive McInnes
We were also able to race another 3 rounds of Standard Quickie to allow the people like Louis and Noel to get in some more flying.
The results of Standard were:
1 – Trevor Budd
2 – John Dorse
3 – Clive McInnes
4. – Louis Moll
5- Andre Nortje
All in all a great time was had by all. Here are some of the more notable pictures:
Old age and treachery beats youth grace and natural skill – about 100 years worth of racing experience! (L-R Peter Sherliker, John Dorse, Frans van Hoogstraten and Andre’ Nortje)
Cheque (check) book racing?
Wayne Wilcox and his Checked GR7 (Loki in Background)
To all the people involved in putting on the NATs at RMAC a great thank you – it was a fantastic event. To all the people who helped with the Pylon timing – Garth Naude , Mike “Ducati” Dippenaar, Anthony Brown, our starter Louise van Hoogstraten, and our two CD’sTerry Hamilton, Chris Allsop and all the others who allowed a bunch of overgrown kids play happily in the sun (and rain) with their cool fast toys, a great thank you.
GO FAST, TURN LEFT