Slope MOMs Racing - Lets get this going!

[OribaSJ88]

That is awesome! Just need some pics now

My bad. I got a bit caught up in the moment and didn't take any. Hopefully some of the other participants can share some pix. The best paint job award goes to Adam, @zeoOne1, whose kids used creativity, and fingers, to produce a color scheme that only children can come up with .

 

[Wayne]

Working to see if I can somehow rearrange my Sunday. Fingers crossed. Just over 500g AUW but CG is probably 15mm too far back.

How sensitive is this plane to CG? What size pack are folks using?

Looks great.

I'm told that a good CG is 57mm. Do not be shy about adding weight to get the correct CG. CG is the most important tuning item on a glider IMHO. Performance is gained and lost via CG.

Battery - Whatever you can get to fit in the space. Literally. I have heard of people using just about everything in these builds. NiHm, Life, Lipo, Lion. Ideally was a Life cell we had, but we cleaned the manufacturer out of his inventory. One of the guys picked up some tiny 2S 250 lipo packs we had in stock after he accidentally killed his main pack. The 250 is not ideal, but it fits. Almost anything else we have in stock right now will not fit.

 

[zeo0nie1]

We had a pretty productive practice session today at Thornton. The conditions were nearly ideal for the numerous maidens that happened today. There were close to 10 Slingshots present and, other than a minor accident, there were no airframes to repair after the event. That's a success in anybody's book! There was even a little friendly MoM racing without flaggers. There were a few close calls, but no carnage resulted. One thing of note was the presence of many paragliders and hang gliders. They were in abundance today and we're going to have to have a strategy for dealing with them as we race.

Great seeing you all! Thanks for organizing, @OribaSJ88

Thanks everyone who helped me get up to speed, especially @Konrad.

The only downside of the day is that I don't know what I'm going to do with all of the balsa kits that I've accumulated now that I've had a taste of "molded" (?) flight

Sunday should work for me.

 

[zeo0nie1]

The best paint job award goes to Adam, @zeoOne1, whose kids used creativity, and fingers, to produce a color scheme that only children can come up with .

Thank you, I will relay this to the artists

If anyone is interested, their commission rate is a box of apple juice and a half hour of cartoons.

 

[Wayne]

Couldn't duplicate it if you tried!

I think you better hang this one up on the wall behind some glass. It is too nice to fly!

 

[OribaSJ88]

Gotta love the creativity of kids! With no disrespect to your kids, I'll stick with multicolor PETG for my models

Let me say a little bit about the organization of the event on Sunday

• Pilots Meeting at 10:30 am. Recent forecasts for Thornton Beach show the winds strong enough for a race by late morning if not earlier.
• Rule number one, two and three are all the same: Have fun! Competitive races can be intense but it's no reason to forget rules 1, 2 and 3!
• Please take a look at the rules before the event. They're pretty simple as far as racing goes.
• We need helpers! I'm going to make an appeal for helpers if any friends or family might be interested in helping for some of the races
  • The "helper math" for the races is often a challenge: For every pilot flying, there need to be 3 people helping (two flaggers and a caller). We will also need a race coordinator and lookout--it's possible that this is one and the same person.
  • To make this work, pilots will have to be both caller and flaggers at times.
  • The race coordinator will take charge of the pilot/plane identification for the flaggers, countdown timer, counting laps for the leader, counting cuts (turning too soon)...
  • The job of the lookout will be to make sure there are no hang gliders or paragliders about to cross our path during a race. There were in abundance over the weekend.
  • So, in summary, we will need, ideally, ten people in order to hold a two pilot MoM heat. We might be able to cut this down a bit if callers double as flaggers at one end. One way or another we'll make it all work.
• If there are any questions, just ask!

Ollie

 

[Wayne]

Do we have the scoring tables? Red? Guy? Ollie?

We also some some walkie talkies to bring. I never finished the lights as when I was reminded of using flags, I simply jumped to that. It is honestly a better solution IMHO. Simple is best.

I always assume pilots will be acting as gate B spotters. But if we have a few non-pilots available, it might make it possible to do some 4 up racing. But for this first race, I think 2 or 3 up will be great. I think most people attending will be new to this style of event, so 4 up might be a bit too much on the first race day.

 

[OribaSJ88]

Do we have the scoring tables? Red? Guy? Ollie?

Wayne, you’re asking the question that I already raised. I don’t have anything. Red had something last year. I’m not sure how well it worked.

Are lighting systems available? If not, I’ll bring flags. I’ll also bring bullhorn with countdown timer.

The course is so short we can almost shout to the other end . I’ll bring a couple walkie talkies, as well.

Many pilots will be new to racing. I’m going to suggest starting out with two man heats. We can increase the number of pilots per race as comfort and number of participants permit.

 

[Wayne]

Yep - I was repeating to get the solution for us. I'm pretty sure Guy wrote up a fresh new program for this??? @gnichola is guy

 

[Red]

I downloaded and played with this for the ISR. It is archaic, but it works well, allows custom heat naming, throw outs etc. I would try that, give yourself a bit of time to figure it out. Wayne was working on lights.

NMPRA - Race Software

 

[OribaSJ88]

I downloaded and played with this for the ISR. It is archaic, but it works well, allows custom heat naming, throw outs etc. I would try that, give yourself a bit of time to figure it out. Wayne was working on lights.

NMPRA - Race Software

Thanks, Red. I don't have a PC laptop but can probably scrounge one if need be.

Wayne, can you confirm that you'll have a lighting system?

Thanks, Ollie

 

[gnichola]

Yep - I was repeating to get the solution for us. I'm pretty sure Guy wrote up a fresh new program for this??? @gnichola is guy

I didn't write one, but I believe I looked at the one Red mentioned. I will grab it and get familiar.

 

[Wayne]

That would be awesome!

 

[Andy Lincoff]

Got my plane together and maidened at the Berkeley Marina on Tuesday in 10-15 winds. It flew great! It really gains altitude easily. I'm very impressed. I'll be there Sunday. One thing to watch out for is the plastic clevises. My elevator clevis came open in flight and came off the servo arm but fortunately I was able to land without damage.

 

[Wayne]

Yikes - That's added fun! A little heat shrink or some tiny rubber bands perhaps?

 

[smirkracing2024]

Yikes - That's added fun! A little heat shrink or some tiny rubber bands perhaps?

I will use some heat shrink but I would agree that these particular plastic clevises have a strange tendency to pop upon and spread when put under load.

I like MP Jet (https://alofthobbies.com/products/m...-6mm-dia-pin-10pk?_pos=4&_sid=4e06a590d&_ss=r). They are not the easiest to get on and off but I've never had one fail and they seem very solid. I don't know what they are rated for, perhaps they are a bit small for the slingshot.

 

[OribaSJ88]

The conditions look pretty solid for tomorrow's MoM event. They'll probably be good enough by late morning and certainly by the early afternoon. We'll go over the basics of the event during the pilots meeting at 10:30 am and race as soon as we have the course setup and the wind can accommodate. See you all there.

Ollie

P.S.: We are in need of a "sighting device" to use as pylons. It can simply be a couple of poles that we can anchor at both ends of the course. It's helpful if there's some kind of flag flying from them. We used the flags below at last year's MoM event, but sadly Red won't be joining us tomorrow. It doesn't need to be that fancy

Wayne, is this something you can provide?

 

[Wayne]

I should have some pole or stakes we can pound into the ground. Probably no flags.

 

[zeo0nie1]

conditions look not great but looking forward to it either way.

 

[Wayne]

Yeah, we might be waiting a little while for conditions.

One of our rules is we don't cancel events, especially not the day of. Maybe delay an event if we are really sure of bad weather. Worse case we spend some quality time with other pilots.