Tag Archives: F3d

Swan Hill 2013 – Event Report

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Event

A panoramic view of the Swan Hill club

It’s the first time that we have raced at Swan Hill in a very long time. We were back to our pre-World Championship numbers with a large number of us camping out at the airfield. There were 7 caravans or camper trailers this time. The club members made us feel very welcome and provided us with food for breakfasts, lunches and Saturday night’s dinner.

The weather was good with the rain stopping mid Friday afternoon and the rest of the time was mostly sunny with light to moderate winds.

Barry Murphy starting his Minute Master with call Andrew Arapakis

The racing for both days started with F400, followed by Q500 and FA1 to finish the day. Time allowed FA1 to complete 6 rounds on the Saturday so only needing 3 more rounds to be completed on Sunday. All classes completed 9 rounds over the weekend.

Thanks to the Swan Hill Club for manning the no.1 pylon timing cage, the VMPRA members who looked after the no. 2 & 3 pylons and as usual, Toni Axon for acting as starter and Nerida Matthews for the tireless job of time keeper/result recorder and keeping us moving along.

Results

FA1

Places:
1st Barry Murphy
2nd Gary Davidson
3rd Vernon Gibson

Fastest Time: 58:55 – Leigh Hocken
No. of competitors – 11

F400

Places:
1st Gary Davidson
2nd Jim Orenshaw
3rd Glenn Matthews

Fastest Time: 65.41 – Gary Davidson
No. of competitors – 8

During the F400 racing, there was the unfortunate demise of models belonging to Daniel Arapakis and James Hurley.

Q500

Places:
1st John Schmidli
2nd Jim Orenshaw
3rd Mike Kellet

Fastest Time: 94:15 – Daniel Arapakis
No. of competitors – 8

Check out the results in detail

Championship

Leigh Hocken IDs his VooDoo

With only a few events under our belts for the season, the Championship is still up for grabs.

FA1 – Barry Murphy has moved up to the top position from second place while Gary Davidson and Glenn Matthews have moved up to 2nd and 3rd places respectively.

F400 – Daniel Arapkis remained in 2nd place with Gary Davidson and Andrew Davies swapping positions with Gary now in 1st position and Andrew in 3rd.

Q500 – John Schmidli remains in 1st place, Jim Orenshaw moved up to 2nd having swapped with Daniel Arapakis, now in 3rd position.

Full Championship Results

New Calendar Entries

It’s worth having a look at the events calander again as there have been some additions.

For this year, there have been 2 non-Championship events added.

  • A sports/Q500 event being put on in November by the LDMFA club. A great chance for those wanting to get into pylon racing, to give it a try.
  • At the end of the year, there is the 67th MAAA Nationals being held in Albury/Wodonga. We have decided to get right behind the Nationals by participating and also encourage others from surrounding states to come along.

2014 Calender

We are starting to get events confirmed for next year, so keep checking back and add them to your diaries. Two events now listed are:

  • Camperdown – the first event for the year.
  • A F3D WC 2015 team select event in October being held at Cohuna.

Next Event

The first time Vern has beaten Brian!

The next event on the Calendar is the State Championship being held at Hamilton on October 12-13. I believe there will be a number of our South Australian friends coming to this event which will be great. I look forward to seeing everybody there.

The championship table has been updated and there is also a photo gallery from this event.

John Schmidli (Report & Photos)
Additional photos thanks to Andrew Arapakis
The written content in this post is acurate to the best of my knowledge at the time of publishing. It is written from my perspective and reflects how I 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.

Quick Reference

Event Result
Photo Gallery
Season Championship
Event Calender

September Update

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It’s not long now until VMPRA heads off to Swan Hill for a race weekend. This is a great opportunity to race at what is a new location on our race calendar.

We’ve been told that the airfield is looking nice and green after a good winter and warming spring. The runways are made up of mallee sand and gypsum (so nice and firm) and surrounded by green grass. Everything is flown here from EDF’s, nitros, fuel ….etc. Even turbines fly here once or twice a year.

There is free on-site camping, a hot shower and toilets. One of the members is supplying a sheep (butchered of course), so the food will be awesome.

For those not camping at the field, here is a suggested alternate accommodation http://www.swanhillholidaypark.com.au

So where is the field? Follow this link to see a Map of the field and greater Swan Hill.

We’re really looking forward to racing at Swan Hill and it will be great to see as many as possible there to make this week end a great success.

Cohuna August 2013 – Event report

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On the 17th & 18th of August we ventured up to Cohuna, a town up near the Victorian and New South Wales border between Kerang and Echuka, for a weekend of pylon racing (classes – FA1, F400 and Q500). This was the first event since the F3D World Championships in Holland that some members of the VMPRA were involved in.

The last event at Bendigo was severely affected by rain and only the F400 class managed to race 4 rounds. This weekend was looking also to be badly effected, not by rain but by very strong winds. Those who traveled up to Cohuna on Friday to do some test flights encountered extremely strong winds. Not much testing was done that afternoon.

In the morning, after even stronger winds during the night, the wind died down and was a lot calmer. Due to the uncertainty of the weather and the fact that there was a forecast for more strong winds on Sunday, we needed to get a good amount of rounds in on the Saturday. We started with FA1 and Q500 together as these classes missed out at the Bendigo event all together.

We flew 5 rounds of FA1 and Q500 during the morning and after lunch, we flew 5 rounds of F400 leaving only a planned 4 rounds of each class for Sunday, weather permitting.

That night, after dinner, the VMPRA AGM was held at a room at the Cohuna Hotel. Members will receive minute of the meeting in the coming weeks.

Sunday morning wasn’t too bad to start with but the winds gradually increased in strength throughout the morning. After 2 rounds of FA1 and Q500, a meeting was held and we agreed to abandon any further racing. We packed up, had lunch, presented trophies and then headed off home early.

Cohuna is a great place for pylon racing and the club provides us with a great deal of support. It was especially good to have enough helpers from the club to man all the pylons including judges for pylon 2 and 3.

FA1

Paces:
1st Barry Murphy
2nd Brian Steel
3rd James Hurley

F400

Places:
1st Andrew Davies
2nd Gary Davidson
3rd Daniel Arapakis

Q500

Places:
1st John Schmidli
2nd Jim Oreshaw
3rd Daniel Arapakis

This event was mostly incident free except for Daniel managing to hit Pylon 2 with his Q500 leaving a trail of polystyrene and balsa strewn across the field. He possibly was followed in his mentors footsteps too closely as Beau Murphy did the same at Munro a short time before the World Championship.

You can view the full result here.

F3D World Championships

In the wrap-up of the World Champs, there has been a lot of information, photos, video etc. added to the official website at www.wcf3d2013.nl/

Congratulations to Chris Callow for taking out the championship once again and to all the Australian & New Zealand team members who took part.

VMPRA Season Championship

Tom receiving the FA1 & F400 2012-2013 season championship trophies.

It’s well and truely off and running after a bit of a fause start due to the Bendigo wash-out. You can compete just by attending as many events as possible and working at building the best set result possible. The championship really rewards consistency.

At this event, the previous championship winners were presented with their awards (Tom Wetherill – FA1 and F400 and John Schmidli – Q500).

Check out the table so far.

Next Event

We are off to Swan Hill on September 14-15. VMPRA hasn’t been to Swan Hill in a long time and it’s always great to get a new location to go racing.

In the last couple of years the Swan Hill club has experienced a real resurgence and they are very keen to have us. There is a group of Swan Hill members that will probably camp at the site and they can also provide up to 8 helpers so this event will be well supported.

They have free on-site camping, a hot shower and toilets and there is likely to be big brekky and lunch at very reasonable prices.

The strip is 50 metres from the pits and the runway is gypsum (no dust) and the club can mow a take-off square and roll it if necessary.

So let’s make this a successful weekend and it would be great to see numbers back up to pre-World Champs numbers.

The championship table has been updated and there is also a photo gallery from this event and you check out the calender for future races.

John Schmidli (Report and Photos).

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