This event unfortunately didn’t go ahead due to poor weather. There was a smaller than usual attendance probably because of the conditions but those that attended were keen. It has been decided to reschedule this event again for December 3 (see the calendar for details). Thanks to those members who came out to run the event .
Championship
The 2016-2107 Season Championship ended back when the Bendigo event was scheduled for. Trophies will be handed out at the AGM when this is held.
The 2016-2017 Season Champions are:
FA1 – Leigh Hocken.
F400 – Andrew Davies
Q500 – Jim Orenshaw.
The fastest time flown for the 2016-2017 Season was:
FA1 – Daniel Arapakis – 57.85 sec F400 – Andrew Davies – 63.93 sec
Q500 – Daniel Arapakis – 94.30 sec
It all starts again from the next event at Newbridge and for your chance for bragging rights.
The next event is being held on September 16-17 at Rick Townsend’s pylon racing field in Newbridge. This will be the 1st time we have gone to this purpose built field.
The field is in good condition and Rick is looking forward to the event being well attended. Steve Taylor will be travelling from Queensland to participate and other interstate pilots have been invited.
The field will be available for practice on Friday 15th.
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
Well, another World Championships “done and dusted”.
I must say that the Swedish F3D organisation ran what can only be described as a wonderful and professional event.
Congratulations to Jiri Novotny from the Czech Republic, Stefan Raven from Belgium and Thomas Eriksson from Sweden on their top results and fair sportsmanship.
First of all we were made to feel extremely welcome with no “special” laws laid down. The entire event ran smoothly with cuts registered on your lane board in real time and your time/result displayed within 5 seconds of your racer crossing the line. There was only one protest, which was dealt with swiftly. We saw the number 2 pylon destroyed on two occasions and repaired within minutes, and only a few re-runs required.
We now have a new World Champion. I must congratulate Daniel Arapakis for his Junior World Champion win. It just goes to prove that with the correct advice and help in this sport top results can be achieved. Good advice in pylon racing is not expensive. It was only 3 or 4 years ago, Danny and his Dad would hide behind a car when a F3D racer was started! Now he is a Junior World Champion. Well done Danny and Andrew also for your contribution to the Australian Team first place podium finish.
This Australian Team win is a special one. Not only is this a win on the scoreboard but a win for the type of Australian competitor.
To be a successful pylon competitor you need a few attributes…..know-how, sharp skills, cool and calm demeanor, a sense of fairness and a goodly amount of ‘gung-ho’ aggression. These boys have all of the above. This is what the world sees in our Australian Pylon way. This is what the world sees in us, as well as our friendly fun-loving nature.
This has been seen as the Australian way in the past- I once read on the wall of the Australian War Museum in Ypres, Belgium- “ The Australian soldier was found to be unpretentious, fun-loving and down to earth but we soon had to build another gaol as they were getting into too much trouble” “We soon had to release them as we realised we needed just this type of soldier” (or words to this effect).
I could have been easily reading a description of an Australian Pylon racing Team (almost).
The Australian Pylon Racing Team does not get into trouble as such…their sense of ‘fun’ can be witnessed by all and when called on they are ready. From the quiet dry humour in the ready box to the silent sixty-second countdown, the explosive and accurate 10 laps followed by satisfied smiles…this team flew for the team…no individual self serving.
To make the Australian Pylon racing Team is an achievement in itself. No walk up starters, no place by default, each place rightly deserved. Even 4th & 5th place in our team trials would make it in most of the world teams.
The 2017 Pylon Team was a pleasure to be a part of and I congratulate them all.
I especially congratulate Danny, as it has been a pleasure to be his mentor.
The next event is AMPRA on June 10 & 11 to be held at Monarto Model Flying Field in South Australia. More information >>>
The next VMPRA event is scheduled for July 8 & 9. Details of what and where this event is to be staged are still to be confirmed.
The F3D World Championships are on in Sweden from July 25 to 29.
Note: The Bendigo event that was to be held on July 29 – 30 has been cancelled due to low numbers partly because of the World Champs. An alternate time and venue for the AGM is TBA.
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
The VMPRA was back racing in Warrnambool, a regional city on the West Coast of Victoria. The Field was in really good condition and the club was sporting some new structures in the form of a new club house and shed. The new club house was yet to be fitted out, so the guys from SA & NSW were allowed to set-up camp in there.
Travelling to Warrnambool on the Friday was a wet affair although conditions at the field where dry enough for setting up camp and to carry out some practice flights.
Saturday was off to an early start and once setup and was completed, we started with F400. Five rounds were completed and by lunch.
Next up was five rounds of FA1. The full Australian F3D 2017 World Championship team were present for this event so we got to see them in some of their final practice and preparations before heading off to Sweden in late July.
By the time the FA1 racing had finished it was getting late. We started Q500 with a healthy field of 9 pilot and managed to complete 2 rounds before low light started to become a problem. After stopping for the day, the drizzle set in.
Unfortunately, that was pretty much the weather for the whole night and most of the next day resulting in no racing on the Sunday and pulling up stumps after lunch.
FA1 & F400 classes had a result but Q500 with only 2 rounds completed, was a non-event. It was a pity as we had a good turn-out with Pilots from SA, NSW & VIC.
While waiting for the weather to improve on the Sunday morning, a reporter and photographer from the Warrnambool Standard interviewed the World Champ Team plots and took some photos for the news paper.
Event Report and Photos – John Schmidli Additional photos – Tom Wetherill
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
Back in March, the VMPRA had a race event back at Barry Murphy’s beautifully prepared pylon racing field down at Munro. It was a great event and the weather was kind to us.
It was great seeing father and son Q500 team, Matt and Xavier Noonan making their first race appearance at Munro as well as seeing Frank Cassella & Tom Prosser putting in really strong performances over the weekend.
Jim Orenshaw remained at the top position 20 points ahead of John Schmidli in 2nd who move up from 3rd with Gary Whitbourn moving down 1 place to 3rd position.
1st – Jim Orenshaw
2nd – John Schmidli
3rd – Gary Whitbourn
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
The first full 3 class race for the year which happens to be the VMPRA Trophy, was held at Camperdown over the weekend of February 4 & 5. Camperdown is always great place to go racing and the local club, the Corangamite Model Aircraft Club is situated in the middle of a horse racing track.
Weather for the Saturday was good although the sun was a bit warm and with concerns of possible rain on the Sunday, our CD for the weekend, (Mick Kellett) pushed to do 5 rounds of all classes on the Saturday. It was a long day with Q500 finishing after 5pm. After F3d finish and prior to Q500, we had to do a course change due to the wind direction shifting. At the end of the day, we had complete 40 races.
Sunday was cloudy and a little cooler. Another course change was required which took a little longer as the measuring line had fallen out of the trailer during the previous change and had to be found to set the pylons correctly.
We needed to complete 3 rounds of each class with rain and thunder forecast for that afternoon. F400 and F3D where competed by about 12:30. After a short lunch break, It all began to be a little challenging for Q500. With smallish numbers, and only 2 heats, we stay out at the flight line for refueling and service the planes to save time. A mid-air collation in the first heat, required a run back to the pits and assembling 2nd planes for Myself (John Schmidli) and John Yianni. The next race, James Hurley’s Viper had the tail fail around 2 & 3. He then had to fetch a 2nd plane. Just as the 2 round was starting a short but very heavy rain storm came through stopping proceeding again. Shortly after, racing resumed and we worked through to the end.
The course was packed up, trophies awarded and after saying a our goodbye, we got away before the rain arrived.
It was an enjoyable weekend and was particularly good to see our regular interstaters, Tom, Shaun & Jarrod Jacobsen and John Yianni from SA and Ranjit Phelan from NSW. It’s big commitment to travel these distances.
Andrew Davies has moved up to top spot. Barry Murphy has moved up to 2nd position from 4th and Glenn Matthews is in 3rd position having been in 5th position previously.
1st – Andrew Davies
2nd – Barry Murphy
3rd – Glenn Matthews
Jim Orenshaw & Gary Whitbourn have remained in first and second places respectively with myself (John Schmidli) moving from 5th position up to 3rd position.
1st – Jim Orenshaw
2nd – Gary Whitbourn
3rd – John Schmidli
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
VMPRA’s last event for 2016 was in December back down at Munro.
Unfortunately there was no report written up for the event so, this post contains the basic results & championship standings.
The first race for 2017 is a Sports & Q500 event to be held on Jan 22 at the Westernport Model Aircraft Club. Looks like we’ll have a really good turn-out. There is always a good amount on Sport flyers there and the Q500 pilots look to be coming out in force.
Only 2 weeks later and we have our first full 3 class event at Camperdown on Feb 4th – 5th. So it all starting up for another year with the F3D world champs thrown in as well.
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event.
Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits.
If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
WPMAC – Western Port Model Aircraft Club located in the seaside town of Crib Point hosted what is no doubt now one of the best Sports 40 and Quickie 500 races on the calendar. Crib Point is the home of HMAS Cerberus and is the Royal Australian Navy’s primary training establishment with history dating back to 1911, now trains 6000 personnel annually with about 800 trainees on-board at any one time.
With the ground swell of Pylon at WPMAC, the committee and members prepared the field to the highest standards putting on awesome flying weather conditions with a light northerly of about 10kph.
Bystanders and new flyers witnessed and took part in a great day of camaraderie, fun, flying and quick times from some of the more serious quickie pilots. Probably one of the most rewarding events to me as the Dad of Dannmann, was to assist and be part of showing a crowd of almost 80 people, something very special that I have shared with my son for 3 years now in flying Pylon. Great to see new father and son team of young Xaviour and Dad Matt Noonan flying in their very first event, learning heaps at every round and like wise with young Cameron Sexton and Dad Gavin, pushing themselves on every lap. It was also great to see new pilots from WPMAC have a go in the Sports event for the very first time, enjoying the fun and adrenaline rush for every second of the racing. Wayne Newman the owner of Addies Hobbies recovering his new model in iridescent fluro’s calling it the Coxy Killer brought a sensational spirit to the racing definitely pushed Alister Cox to the limit.
With 4 rounds of Sports 40 and Scanner racing after a great race demo between Dannmann and Jimmy saw Manny Reiderich take out 1st prize with his buddy Mick Kellet as his caller. Great to see Mark Jacob return to this event and also posted the quickest time of the day of 142.6 seconds claiming 2nd place and an ambassador to our famous club Alister Cox flying a ripper race with no cuts on the podium with 3rd place. New pilots to the event were Club President Mr Brian Holmes, Matt Noonan and Justin Trist, all having a great time !
After a banquet BBQ lunch, the Q500 field consisted of 13 pilots, battle it out also for 4 rounds. Mark Jacob with his scratch built Quickie, Cameron Sexton with his trusted Angelov model, Lucas Newman with his brand new Viper 500 all flew great as new comers to the racing. It was a ripper to see Matt Carter from Hasting Hobbies returning to Q500 racing with great reliable racing. Young gun Austin Omann cut him self out of the race as to did Dannmann after recording the fastest time of the event of 94.30 seconds. Young Cameron Sexton is now recording times under 110 seconds with his caller Dannmann mentoring him for future success. Veteran racers took the podium on Sunday with Mick Kellet returning to racing and was rewarded with 1st place – onya Mick and we are all very glad to see you return with great spirits and fantastic flying. Jim Orenshaw flew in true style taking 2nd place and well deserved after years of commitment and passion to this sport and so with Gary Davidson at 70 years of age showing up the rest of the field.
No doubt the weekend was one to remember with fantastic club spirit and passion for this very unique aspect of aeromodelling that is tremendously rewarding. it is a combination of fun, a winning spirit, strategy, and the 3 P’s says Baz Murphy – patience, perseverance and practice!
Well done to all pilots, callers, helpers, members, visitors, committees of both WPMAC and VMPRA for a great weekend of flying and fun!
Event Report – Andrew Arapakis
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event. Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits. If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
Back on August 28, The Westernport Model Aircraft Club hosted the 2nd Sport and Q500 pylon race for the year. Although I wasn’t able to be there for much of the day, I did see the last couple of hours of racing. It was great to see so many new faces to pylon racing and not just in the sport class but also involved in the Quickie class. It would be fantastic if we could see these new competitors start to compete at our regular events as we travel all over Victoria.
Results
Class – Sports
Places: 1st Manny Reiderich
2nd Mark Jacob
3rd Alister Cox
Fastest Time: 142.60 – Mark Jacob
No. of competitors: 9
Only Q500 was involved in the last event, so this is the standings as of the Westernport Event. The defending champ, Jim Orenshaw has popped up into 1st position from 3rd. Mike Kellet moved up to 2nd place from 7th and Gary Whitbourn moved up 1 position into 3rd spot.
The next event is the VIC State Championship to be help at Munro on September 17-18. This event is the 2nd F3D World Championship team selection trial and as such, flying of the F3D class will take priority.
Event Report – John Schmidli
Photos – Lydia Arapakis
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event. Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits. If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
Each year in July, the VMPRA head off to Bendigo, a regional city situated in the gold fields of central Victoria. It is also the start of the new season championship and we hold our annual general meeting at this event each year. Traditionally, this generally being in the middle of Winter, we can have some pretty cold and wet weather. Luckily, this year we were blessed with quite good conditions and Sunday felt positively Spring-like.
As we gathered out at the Marong Model Airfield, conditions were a little foggy but this soon cleared and test flights were carried out. The challenge for the weekend came when setting up the pylon course and in particular the #1 pylon cage. Both the trailer and car towing it dropped into a particularly soft patch of earth as there had been quite an amount of recent rain. Next Tom Allen’s 4-wheel drive ended up stuck while trying to extract the car and trailer. It took another 4-wheel drive of James Hurley’s and some harder ground to start extracting all the vehicles and the cage. As a result, it was just before midday before racing got underway.
First up was Formula 400 with the aim to run only 3 rounds due to the very late start.
Next up was Quickie 500 to also fly 3 rounds. As this class has a relatively easy and quick turn-around time (with only 6 competitors), we refueled out on the line. 3 rounds were quickly completed and we had lunch.
After the late lunch it was time for FA1 (F3D) to race. There were unusually low numbers with only 4 competing so the races where over quickly but model prep/turn-around was slow. Even still, 4 rounds where completed before the end of racing for the day.
During the day, I took the opportunity to test out Facebook Live to film and televise a Q500 and FA1 race. It worked quite well with some well known names from around the world of pylon racing, coming online and viewing the video live. You should be able to view these from the VMPRA facebook page.
In the evening a group of us went off to the Marong pub for dinner. For the size of the town of Marong, the pub is excellent. After dinner, we headed back to the Marong caravan park for our AGM and general meeting. The main change to come from the meeting was James Hurley being elected as our new President of VMPRA taking up the vacancy left by Glenn Matthews after many years as president. I know all the members will join me in thanking Glenn for all his hard work in the past, of which we are only now really starting to get a real appreciation of what he has been doing and congratulating and supporting James in taking up this position.
With Saturday being a rather grey, cold and threatening day, It was a real pleasure to come out to the field on the Sunday morning to sunny still conditions which continued all day. It became warm enough for a few of us to end up stripped down to t-shirts.
Test flying was supervised by Toni Axon in line with our new safety requirement as discussed at the general meeting the night before (these will be published and communicated before the next event).
Racing for the day was the same order as Saturday with F400 and then Q500 doing 5 rounds each with Q500 gaining another competitor in local, Shaun Powers. It was good to see him there having raced with us 2 years prior. FA1 started fairly late and only ended up flying 7 rounds for the weekend whereas F400 and Q500 flew 8.
With this event being one of the 1st with Glenn & Nerida being way, it was good that we had people chipping in to help run the event. In all it went fairly well with only one glitch with the new laptop which had the old version of the timing program loaded, so we had to manually drop the extra round. This will all be sorted for future events.
Below is the 2015-2016 Season Championship for FA1F400 and Q500. Congratulations Daniel, Brian and Jim. It is quite an effort to string together good performances, event after event to be in the position to win the season championship.
Now we have already started the 2016-2017 season championship so let’s see who can get to the top this year. There is nothing like a challenge to made us lift our performance.
Season Championship after 1 event.
FA1
1st – Brian Steele 2nd – Andrew Davies
3rd – Leigh Hocken
We have reset the fastest times with the start of a new championship year. A huge congratulation goes out to Leigh Hocken for taking out the fastest times for last season in both FA1 and F400 and Daniel Arapakis for taking it out for Q500.
Next Race
The next event for VMPRA is a Q500 and Sports/Scanner race down at Crib Point on August 28. The race we had there earlier in the year was great with a lot of new comers to pylon competing. This one is really worth getting involved with. It is also part of the season championship for Q500.
The written content in this post is accurate to the best of my/our knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my/our perspective and reflects how I/we have experienced this event. Photos published as feature images are selected purely for their quality, general interest or topicality. They are chosen from a pool of photos taken by myself and others when time permits. If a perspective is not being represented, I am more than happy to publish any written content or photos that are supplied to me provided it is fair and reasonable.
This event unfortunately didn’t go ahead due to poor weather. There was a smaller than usual attendance probably because of the conditions but those that attended were keen. It has been decided to reschedule this event again for December 3 (see the calendar for details). Thanks to those members who came out to run the event .
