Asia Pacific Open F3K contest report

This past weekend was the Asia Pacific Open F3K event, the third APO. This contest is a team event for the Asian and Pacific countries, held this year in Singapore and hosted by the Soaring Association of Singapore. They did an outstanding job in organizing and running the event. Getting used to the weather was a bit difficult for those of us that came from the southern hemisphere winter, the 32C and higher temps, with the high humidity took a while to get used to!

Why am I posting this on the Snipe2 thread? Well, the New Zealand team flew Snipe2 aircraft. All of us had the same evaluation in regards to the improved launch height of the Snipe2, as well as the benign handling and good flight performance. We flew a total of 15 preliminary rounds, and the three NZ team members finished 1, 2, 3, with a rather good point margin. See the preliminary round scores http://f3xvault.com/?action=event&fu…&event_id=1326 One thing to note here is that we had a very wide variety of conditions during the three days of preliminary rounds, with some rounds having zero lift and zero wind, some rounds with very active lift, and some rounds with very punishing winds and horrific sink due to the outflow from a nearby thunderstorm. We had the rather full range of flying conditions during the contest, and we were all quite happy that we had a plane that could deliver excellent performance throughout the full range of conditions. It was clear that some of the aircraft were optimized for performance for only a subset of full range of conditions that we experienced in the preliminary rounds.

Now, the flyoff rounds… Shortly after the preliminary rounds completed, the wind started to pick up a bit, and the lift got a bit more scarce. The contest director held a fun, and also very competitive, event prior to the start of the flyoffs. He declared an all up last down event for all pilots that were not in the flyoffs, with beer as a prize for the top three pilots. This event showed the brutality of the punishing sink on the field, as the first launch sorted out the pilots. The initial idea was that if a pilot landed before the end of the 3 minute slot, they would be finished with the event continuing until there was only three pilots left. Well, nobody even got close to three minutes! I think the best of the pilots made it to just over 2 minutes with most less than one minute. The wind was only a small factor as it was maybe 4-5 m/s. Shortly after this, the flyoffs started, with 3×3:20. I had marked some air in the one minute flight test period prior to the start. So, I launched and headed to where I thought it would drift. Turned out that I was completely wrong, and did a 40 second flight! Fortunately, that was my only real mistake for the entire six rounds of the flyoffs, and ended up finishing with over 500 pts margin over the 2nd placed pilot. Scores are here: http://f3xvault.com/?action=event&fu…&event_id=1342 I ended up dropping just over 100 points in the six round flyoff, with the second place pilot dropping more than 600 points and the third place pilot down around 1k points. Brutal conditions, with some big lift, a lot of big sink, and even the occasional eagle that really didn’t like Snipe2 aircraft. On the 2:30 flight of the big ladder, an eagle locked onto my plane and tried to attack for almost a full minute. I used up a lot of altitude trying to run from the eagle, then decided to go on offense as defense just wasn’t working. It took a while, but I finally pulled a few looping attacks that got the eagle to consider easier prey… fortunately I had really hooked up well in a strong thermal so I had enough excess energy to do this!

I credit the large performance range of the Snipe2 as well as the excellent launch for my performance in the flyoffs. The Snipe2 allowed me to range very far away when needed to get away from sink and into good air, and also allowed me to hang in the very light air when that was necessary. This contest wasn’t at all about fluffy air and turnaround performance, but instead about performance in very challenging conditions. Thanks Vladimir!

RC4D,

I have a HM light and a HM regular (206g and 231g weights).

I flew the light when the conditions were flat and little wind. We had a couple of times where there was no wind and zero lift. One slot seemed to be general light sink as the best flight time of all of the 12 pilots in the slot for 3×3:20 was 2:48. There was just nothing to work, launch high, maybe do a circle or two when you think you have something, but mostly fly in minimum sink. I dropped a few seconds in total to the winner in that slot as I fumbled the first throw, and the young/athletic winner of the slot can seriously outlaunch me! He was also flying a Snipe…

In the very windy and turbulent conditions from the thunderstorm outflow, I flew at 350g total, with 120g ballast. My ballast selection currently goes up to 160g, and I may make a 200g for extreme conditions.

The flyoffs had around 5-6 m/s winds, and I flew with with 24g, 42g, and 60g of ballast in the 231g plane. The ballast was changed to match the task and the conditions at the time. I tend to fly lighter for shorter duration tasks, such as for the 5×2 I flew with 24g and the 3×3:20 I had 60g, but thought I was too heavy. The last three rounds I flew with 42g. The ballast wasn’t only for the wind, but was needed for penetration through the very strong sink that we had. One needed to punch out through sustained sink in order to get to the good air that was sometimes quite far away. The pilots that didn’t do this got punished severely at various times.

Kev had only a light Snipe2 (201g), and he flew it with up to 100g of ballast in it if I remember correctly.

There is no perfect flying weight, and different people like to be lighter or heavier. It depends on the flying style. My experience is that a small variation in ballast doesn’t make a critical difference. We do a bit of practice where one pilot goes light, and another pilot goes heavy as compared to what we think the optimum is. Sometimes the increased weight can help and sometimes it hurts.