Paul,
Thanks for posting the results.
John

Actually there were three grass circles available. The official circle with a new paved centre, plus two grass practice circles, one of which was used as the walkoff area for planes that were still running after the match.

Even with two official circles, it has never been possible to save much time. With one circle, if you count the active match plus the incoming match you have FOUR TEAMS involved, that's 12 contestants. If you have two official circles, the number of contestants involved comes to 24.

Pilots act as each-others mechanics in many (too many) cases, or else share mechanics. Even with only one circle, the same man ends up pitting, flying, then pitting again in consecutive matches.  

By MY count there were about 108 actual matches.   On Saturday, they were run off as fast as humanly possible, one circle or two.   When it got to the final nine on Sunday afternoon, there were a lot of the interlocking teams that I described above. If we had tried to expedite the contest any more, it would not have been combat, but merely a scramble to get something into the air.

I would say that if were get more than 32 entries again, we should begin official flights at NOON on Friday.   If we get over 40, we need to begin on Friday morning.  

Each match of combat is life-and-death event to the contestants, so we need to run a pace that does justice to the importance of the competition.

Thanks a lot to Pat & Ivan for coming over to piut for the local teams plus anybody who needed top notch help.   I have a hunch that some of the "final 9" would have been better off using their services than staying with expert, but exhausted mechanics.

It looked to me like the Greg Hill plane with an enhanced Rudner swingweight shut down with 30 feet out and skidded another 20 feet with the engine stopped.  The plane that went into the trees had a bent wire line pull system, which in the opinion of the judges, hadn't begun to work when it hit the trees.

We did 100% tech inspection including line length and pull test for every flight.  195 airplanes were inspected for 432 trips through the pits.  That's four planes each for 108 matches.  We broke about six sets of lines.  I want to give that at least partial credit for reducing flyawys.

From where I sat, I believe I saw about six "false" shutdowns which I blame on over-anxious shutoffs.  In one case, an otherwise perfect streamer transfer was disrupted by an accidental triggering of the shutoff.

I also want to put in a big attaboy for Brad Lapointe who came over from Dresden and worked both days.  Having been on serveral F2D teams and most recently Team Manager of Team Canada (bronze medal),  he pull tested, judged, and acted as an expert consulant to the CD and Jury Chairman.

I somewhat agree with your point.

Howver, the model went slack on the far side of the circle and chorded all the way across with the lines slack, so the shutoff had almost 100 feet to work.  It was a bent wire line pull system, so if it was ever going to shut down, the officials would have heard a power reduction before it hit the end of the lines and snapped loose on the "tree side".

The incident occured in the final minute of the match, so perhaps the contestant was willing to accept the DQ since he was losing on points anyway.

nice comments and write ups.

My number of contestants for a triple elm contest for a two day good wx....33. Then it reverts to a double elem or a 3 day trip elem.

Pat