Indoor News and Views

2018 F1D Championship USA Jr Team Manager’s Report

USA Junior Team: Third Place Junior Team

AMA Records Set:

AMA Youth Senior National F1D record for Cat III: Joseph Szczur

AMA Youth Junior National F1D record for Cat III: Ross Clements

During the practice day before the World Champs the Junior team was able to fly and adjust their models in preparation for the first day of competition. As the day went on, the outside weather started to change and rain turned into freezing rain. By the next morning, the first day of the Championships, the air inside the atrium had become quite turbulent and un-flyable. At the walls of the atrium air went up quickly, and in the center, a strong down draft pushed models back down to the ground.

Chris Lou started off Round 1 and after a few minutes his model had drifted way over by the restaurant area. Chris steered his model back to the flying area and was able to catch some of the updrafts to get in a flight of 11:22. Ross Clemens put up his first round flight but had an issue when his model hit a timer and damaged the horizontal stabilizer. Joseph Szczur ‘s first round flight had issues with the motor stick after rubber hookup so was taken back for repairs.

In round 2, Chris put up a flight but was pushed out of the air by the downdrafts and was down in under 4 minutes. Ross had a similar flight pattern and was down a little after 6 minutes. Joseph’s flight encountered some drafts and his model ended up landing on a balcony.

The beginning of round 3 looked to be not much better than the previous day. Ross took a flight and was down in just over 3 minutes. Joseph went up and damaged wingtip brought him down in under 4 minutes. Chris flew last in that round on a different batch of rubber but did not climb very high and put in a 8:39.

Round 4 is when the air starting getting better and the French Junior Team had good flights where the sun was shining on the floor. Joseph put up a nice flight but instead of finding the thermal air like the French team did, he instead hit some down air and was down at 10:17. Ross put up a flight but he had added higher pitch at launch and that prevented the model from climbing very high. He was still able to get in a 13:06. Chris put up his flight and drifted to the wall and hit a vertical column and his model hung up at 9:09.

In round 5, Chris again tried the alternate batch of rubber with the better air but the model did not hold height well and landed at 10:28 with lots of turns left. Ross made some adjustments and his model climbed much higher than before. He made a nice steer to get the model away from trouble then after release, suddenly the prop caught under the wingtip and was down at 3:49. Joseph was able to get in a 10:17 back up flight.

Round 6, the final round, the air was very good and lots of people were trying to fly at the very end. Joseph put up a nice 15:32 which was his high time for the contest as well as a new AMA Youth Senior National record. Ross put up a nice flight and did a 14:45 setting a new AMA Youth Junior National record (and the wing tip was broken during that flight). Chris went back to the original rubber batch from the practice day and put in his best flight of the competition which got up just below the girders and ran all the turns off and landed at 15:11, just 20 seconds shy of the record set by Joseph earlier.

The Juniors did an excellent job while working under the combination of bad flying conditions and the pressure of a World Championships.

Don Slusarczyk – 2018 F1D Junior Team Manager