NARAM

Questor wrote:

jbuscaglia wrote:

billspad wrote:

Now John can fill everyone in on his contest flying experiences.

Do I have to?

YES!

Please

Well, OK, since you said please.

Where to start - let\'s see. How about Sunday?

Sunday night is the turn-in for the events which require judging. R&D and Giant Sport Scale were on the agenda this year.

I fly in the team division with my friends Gary and Fran Miller from Green Bay, WI. We split up responsibility for the events and this year it was my task to do the Giant Sport Scale model. We\'ve never entered the R&D event.

I chose to do a Black Brant X. Based around a BT-55, it would end up approximately 4 feet tall when fully assembled. Since I was flying out (and still painting it the day before I left) I couldn\'t assemble it until I got to CO or it wouldn\'t fit in my carry-on luggage. We spent most of Saturday night into the wee hours on Sunday gluing all the pieces together and getting the decals on. Some years, we\'ve been working right up to the deadline, so it was good to be able to go out to the range and do some sport flying on Sunday.

The model turned out pretty well, but I had a paint incompatibility issue. A large crack developed in the paint. I tried to fix it, but there\'s still a pretty bad spot. We\'ll see how it got judged when the static scores are revealed tonight.

There are some incredible models entered. Check out Chris Taylor\'s NARAM live website at naramlive.com/naramlive-2010/index.html for pictures.

More to follow...

Monday\'s events were 1/2A Parachute Duration and B Streamer Duration. Fran had PD and I had SD. Well, half anyway. I built the models and she made the streamers.

We flew SD first. The model that we chose had a BT-20 fin unit tha tapered to BT-50 for the main body. The bulk of the body was replaced by a tube rolled from Kapton, a heat-resistant plastic film, to save weight. An 8\"x80\" Micafilm streamer completed the model. First flight was qualified and returned after a 61 second flight. Nothing spectacular, but it was early in the day and there wasn\'t much lift. We moved on to Parachute Duration and would fly the second flight later in the day after the thermals started popping.

Fran\'s PD model also featured a Kapton tube, this time in BT-5. She managed to stuff a 24\" 1/4 mil mylar \'chute in that space. It launched on a 1/2A3-4T and 2 minutes later, it was safely down with a qualified, returned flight.

For the second streamer flight , we went with the same set-up as the first. We tried to catch a thermal that came through, but there was a delay getting the timing team ready and we missed it. The model flirted with the edge of it, but in the end, we managed only 69 seconds. Our total would put us solidly in the middle of the pack.

We had better luck with the second PD flight. We could feel the air warming and the flags in different parts of the range were moving in different directions, so we knew were were right in the middle of a good thermal. We got the model off and it settled into the thermal. A 4:50 flight, combined with the first, would be good enough to put us into fourth place.

Our EZ-Up had survived Monday night\'s severe thunderstorm, so it looked like our good fortune was holding. Little did we know we had exhausted our supply of luck for the day on the tent.

Tuesday\'s events were E Dual Egg Altitude and 1/4A Boost Glider Duration. I built the gliders. I modified an ancient (circa 1975) design called the Drunken Idiot. I trimmed the model as best as I could and went off to fly it in the early morning calm.

The model was a bit squirrelly on boost. The glider detached just after burnout and settled into a stalling glide. A 13 second qualified flight. The pod attachment was a little sloppy, so I snugged it up a bit, added some nose weight and would try it later.

In the meantime, we switched to eggloft. Gary had built a longer tower for the eggs in the hopes of solving some tip-off problems we\'ve had in the past. Our weapon of choice was an old Apogee Streamliner on an E15-7. This was the same combination that we had used to set the current record of 600m at NARAM-39 in Tucson. The model left the tower and immediately went unstable. The \'chute popped high enough that the eggs survived, but we were disqualified. One of the fins had torn loose, which most likely caused the instability, but it was not known how it happened.

On the second glider flight, the boost instability was worse than the first flight. Another DQ.

We decided to go with an E9 for the second egg flight, even though it would not have a realistic chance of taking a place. We got a good boost and the trackers saw it, but the \'chute snarled and it came in too fast. DQ. Broken eggs.

To add insult to injury, our record was broken by nearly 250m.

jbuscaglia wrote:

To add insult to injury, our record was broken by nearly 250m.

Is that a typo or is it really almost 50% higher than your record?

billspad wrote:

jbuscaglia wrote:

To add insult to injury, our record was broken by nearly 250m.

Is that a typo or is it really almost 50% higher than your record?

No, it\'s not a typo, but it\'s only 42% higher. The Flying I-Beam Kids hit over 800m. I think that the actual number was 849m, but I\'m not certain. They used an Apogee E6. We had 421m on our second flight. They had over twice our altitude. Very sad.

jbuscaglia wrote:

No, it\'s not a typo, but it\'s only 42% higher. The Flying I-Beam Kids hit over 800m. I think that the actual number was 849m, but I\'m not certain. They used an Apogee E6. We had 421m on our second flight. They had over twice our altitude. Very sad.

I have no real sense of what an egglofter weighs but running random numbers in Wrasp it looks like it would have to weigh 85 grams to get that altitude with an E6. Using the same mass and diameter with an E9 yours should have gone 541 meters. So under the best conditions you were mathematically doomed to failure.