It was a quite windy on Sat afternoon. I made a huge mistake trying to burn in a really good flight when I should have kept it in survival mode.
I actually did not see yours in particular, but a recent tendency around here has been forcing the maneuver size down, sometimes below the specified dimensions. That's generally a good thing, compared to the usual 75 degree high loops you routinely saw in Intermediate and Advanced in other areas. I think that's because Ted, David, and I emphasize that in our flying. Anyone who watched carefully on Sunday saw that the very top pilots, just back from the TT, fly as close to the specified dimensions as possible even in the moderate to strong air. But to do that also requires lightning cornering and very well-controlled speeds, unusual even in most regular airplanes and almost impossible with classic airplanes. Thats why they are "classic" and no one is flying Gieseke Noblers with Foxes at the team trials, including Gieseke himself when he was still around.
John Callentine showed the way to deal with the issue for classic (and again in Expert). He was flying one of the older Rabe Mustang designs, and may have had the least corner of any airplane in the event. But, he never let himself get into the "coffin corner" by making sure that he always had sufficient space to make it. He was also aided by the fact that he had plenty of tension everywhere even at reasonable speeds. He was larger than the average, but not large enough to cause a large score loss, compared to making it the right size and getting burned by blatant issues trying to force the corners tighter, or crashing. Knowing how to do that without making the maneuvers absolutely gigantic is also an art, just a matter of knowing the technique and practicing it. There's only really a few places to make compensations - Brian Moore's unfortunate vertical 8 issue was (pardon the pun) a classic and back in the day with 4-2 break motors, you either learned the trick or crashed a lot.
When you do it right, the airplane goes in *exactly* the same place it would go in the dead calm, so you really aren't making the maneuvers bigger. But you *are* putting in control effort in radically different ways than you normally do. You should have heard Chris Cox and I going "oooh!" frequently 3-4 seconds before it actually happened when we were over there judging Advanced - once you know where the problems are likely to come, you can anticipate it well before it happens, because the corrections have to be put in well in advance.
In fact, that is true of most of the corrections for shapes regardless of the wind. You can't wait until the crisis point and then try to fix it, you have to correct it, in general, half a loop before the crisis point. That's were a lot of coaching goes wrong, say, if you are missing intersections on a round loop, you can't just jam the controls right as you get there and try to fix it, you have to correct that long before you get there.
I heard reference to Paul Walker writing an article about how to fly in the wind, and there aren't too many people better at it than he is, probably worth checking out. I think you saw his second flight yesterday - I question the supposed 25 mph part but it was definitely blowing pretty good when he flew, and you saw firs
Brett
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