This was the second race for the 2022/2023 season championship.
FA1
Tom Wetherill has popped up into the top spot followed by Rick Townsend and Daniel Arapakis, displaying Leigh Hocken and Gary Davidson out of the top 3 positions.
1st – Tom Wetherill 2nd – Rick Townsend 3rd – Daniel Arapakis
F3T
There was no change for 3FT as the class was not able to race on the weekend due to weather and time left.
1st – Jim Orenshaw 2nd – Barry Murphy 3rd – Andrew Davies
Q500
The 2 Toms swapped positions and Jim Orenshaw displaced Mike Kellet for 3rd place.
1st – Tom Allen 2nd – Tom Wetherill 3rd – Jim Orenshaw
Please note: We are looking for someone to write event reports regularly. Also, it would be wonderful to have someone photograph these events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide, as this site has a vast readership.
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 the 13th & 14th of August. The VMPRA returned to Cohuna, the home of pylon racing in Victoria. Below are the results and Season Championship standings, plus a link to a gallery of images from the weekend.
Report – John Schmidli Photos – Tom Allan & John Schmidli
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide, as this site has a vast readership.
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.
On May 28-29, the VMPRA headed off to Barry Murphy’s fantastic purpose-built pylon racing field at Munro. On arrival on Saturday morning, I was struck by how many people were camping out at the field with a plethora of vans, trailers and tents all set up.
We couldn’t have picked a better weekend for the weather. It was mostly clear skies, mild temperatures (once the sun was up) and light breezes. There was a good amount of entries with 7 x Q500, 7 x F3T & 5 x F3D entries, plus a good amount of spectators. It was a pleasure not having trouble getting helpers; hence all racing was carried out with a full complement of pylon judges.
We carried out 8 rounds of each class and there was some excellent racing, particularly at the top of the tables. The race results pretty much tell the story of the racing for the weekend.
Other than that, it was an enjoyable and social weekend and although I wasn’t there on the night, I believe there was a great feed put on, as usual, by Andrew Arapakis and Matt Noonan’s band was a big hit. This is something new to pylon racing for us. Good one Matt.
At this stage, it looks like these are the final positions for this season’s championship as we would be holding our AGM at the next event, Cohuna making that event the start of the new 2022-2023 season.
FA1
After Beau’s win this weekend, he’s popped up from 3rd position into 1st place pushing both Brian and Tom down a place into 2nd and 3rd respectively.
1st – Beau Murphy 2nd – Brian Steele 3rd – Tom Wetherill
F3T
Jim has remained at the top 10 points ahead of Barry who has jumped up into 2nd place from 5th and Brian has moved up into 3rd place from 4th.
1st – Jim Orenshaw 2nd – Barry Murphy 3rd – Brian Steele
Q500
There was no change in places since the last race at Echuca with Jim strengthening his lead, 8 points ahead of John.
1st – Jim Orenshaw 2nd – John Schmidli 3rd – Gary Whitbourn
Report – John Schmidli Photos – Sarah Doyle, Andrew Arapakis & John Schmidli
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast readership.
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.
On the weekend of May 14-15th, the VMPRA headed to a new club for us, the “Echuca Moama Model Aero Club”.
The facilities at this club were fantastic and a good size contingent took advantage of this and camped out at the field. There would have been about 8 caravans there.
This was a new field to us and a new event to the local club members, so this race was only two classes, F3T & Q500. I think this made for an enjoyable and slightly more relaxed weekend and resulted in good numbers of entries, with 7 for F3T & 11 for Q500.
The only difficulty we had was due to so many Q500 entries, we had some difficulty getting helpers on the No.1 pylon. Luckily, a couple of club members helped us out on Saturday and some friends of David and Toni Axon, helped on Sunday. The weather was perfect on both days and we enjoyed 2 great days of racing.
The next race meet will be on May 28-29 at Barry’s flying field in Munro and we’ll be back to our usual 3 class race event. I hope to see you all there.
Report – John Schmidli Photos – Anh Swift & John Schmidli
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast readership.
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 the 26-27th of March, the VMPRA held its second race event for the year at Rick Townsend’s pylon racing field in Newbridge. Although the numbers were a little down on usual, we had a successful weekend on pylon racing. The weather was perfect, everybody chipped in with helping and the Townsend family provided us with some delicious breakfast and lunch offerings.
As I mentioned, numbers were a little down on usual, particularly in Q500 as Gary and Alan Whitbourn had to pull out at the last moment.
It was great to have a new pilot, Anthony Thurgood from Warrnambool, racing Q500 with us for the first time. Anthony was at the Previous event at Warrnambool and was inspired to come along and have a go. As a first-time pylon racer, he flew very well and seemed to pick up flying the course quickly.
There are a few photos from the event in that gallery.
Brian, Tom and Beau all moved up one position on the season championship with Leigh Hocken slipping down to 4th position due to not competing this weekend.
1st – Brian Steele 2nd – Tom Wetherill 3rd – Beau Murphy
F3T
Glenn stayed in the top place but Andrew and Jim swapped positions.
1st – Glenn Matthews 2nd – Andrew Davies 3rd – Jim Orenshaw
Q500
There was no change in positions for Q500
1st – Jim Orenshaw 2nd – John Schmidli 3rd – James Hurley
The next race meet will be on May 14-15 in Echuca and we will be running only 2 classes. F3T & Q500.
More about this event:
The most exciting and exhilarating discipline of RC – pylon racing comes to the Echuca State field on the 14/15th of May. Two classes will be flown, the introductory class Q500 and the international class F3T. The racing is flown around a 400-metre triangular course for 10 laps, the Q500 models complete the race in around 90 to 100 sec, and the F3T models complete the race in around 60 to 70 seconds.
This will be the inaugural event at the Echuca field and we encourage all pylon flyers to support the event and the Echuca club. We encourage those who want to witness pylon racing for the first time to come and have a look or bring a model (any model) and ”have a go”.
The pylon racing fraternity is a very friendly and supportive group from all walks of life sharing one passion and will go out of their way to welcome and help both newcomers and the experienced racer.
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast readership.
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.
On the weekend of February 26-27, 2022, we finally had a chance to get together and run our 2021 AMPRA Champs. The AMPRA event was also a team selection for the F3D World Championships to be held later this year in the U.S. This meant we had lots of competitors from interstate come down, which was great to see.
We had some of our interstate visitors arrive earlier in the week. On the Friday afternoon when I arrived, there were many people there practising and set up ready for the weekend.
To ensure our best chance of getting through our flying programme for the weekend, we scheduled to start racing quite early (at 8 am), meaning people were turning up to setup their planes in the dark. The first class we ran, this being a team trial, was F3D, one of the priority classes for the weekend. We managed to get through the five minimum required rounds very early.
After a short break, we commenced flying F3E and Q500 to give the competitors of F3E, a chance to charge batteries between rounds, which worked quite well and kept a good flow for the event.
We managed to get through the eight rounds of combined F3E & Q500 by about the middle of the afternoon, meaning we could bring forward the AMPRA meeting. We had to discuss some items of business for AMPRA. AMPRA (Australian Miniature Pylon Racing Association) is the Australian body for pylon racing. This event was the AMPRA Championships, which we hold once a year, normally in June, but due to COVID, this had been delayed from last year.
The next day we started early again. First up, we had to finish the remaining three rounds of F3D, making up a total of eight rounds. This done, we had completed the required racing for the team trials.
It was still early in the day, so we had time to run a good eight rounds of F3T. This class is always great to race and we had a good mix of Victoria and Queensland flyers flying this event.
F3T all finished up in the early afternoon after a short break for lunch. Presentations were made and we started leaving the field about 2:30 in the afternoon.
In general, it was a great event. It was excellent to have competitors from interstate, including Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria.
We saw some fantastic racing. In particular, some very tight racing between Beau Murphy and Lea Hocken, with Beau coming out on top with some excellent times. It was also great to see some good results in F3E. Quickie 500 was competed only by Victorians and as usual, Jim Orenshaw came out on top.
The Warrnambool club did another great job of hosting, and we all very much appreciated it. Everyone pitched in and helped with pylon judging and timing. A great weekend had by all.
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast readership.
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.
Finally, the VMPRA was able to go back to racing and back to the Warrnambool Model Aircraft Club. What a fantastic club facility they have there. The field was beautifully prepared, the club put on great catering and the help was incredible.
Saturday was a little wet particularly in the morning and early afternoon so after completing 4 rounds of Q500, we held the AMG. After that, the weather had clear enough to fly 4 rounds of F3D,
Sunday, the weather was more stable and with an early start, we completed 8 rounds of F3T, then the balance of the Q500 and F3D rounds. All in all, it was a great weekend and the welcome return to pylon racing in Victoria.
We look forward to returning to this club for our world champs team selection event in Feb 2022.
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is an important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast viewership.
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, it has been such a long time since we last all went pylon racing. With a false start back in February due to wet weather, the VMPRA finally re-launched pylon racing in Victoria.
The weather was kind to us and we managed to race a complete program of 8 rounds of Q500, F3D & F3T over the weekend.
An early start and refuelling out on the line saw Q500 complete five rounds before 11 am. Next up was F3D, with four rounds and then after lunch, two rounds of f3T before a cool change came through, stopping flying for the day.
We finally held our long-delayed AGM from last year and later that night, we all enjoyed another one of Andrew Arapakis’s spit roast meals.
Sunday was cooler compared to Saturday’s warm and humid conditions. As a result, times were faster, with fast and furious racing by Beau Murphy and Daniel Arapakis for F3D. David Chippindall also recorded a very fast sub 90 sec time for Q500.
We cycled through all the remaining rounds and classes, managing to finish up by lunch. After a lunch break consisting of some very nice pizza’s and left-overs from Saturday night, we packed up, held presentations and headed home.
As I said at the start, it was great to be back racing again and thanks to Barry Murphy for having us at his excellent pylon racing field.
Results
Class – FA1
Places: 1st Beau Murphy
2nd Daniel Arapakis
3rd Barry Murphy
Fastest Time: 57.63 Daniel Arapakis
No. of competitors: 4
Class – F3T
Places: 1st Glenn Matthews
2nd Barry Murphy
3rd Jim Orenshaw
Fastest Time: 63.73 Glenn Matthews
No. of competitors: 7
Places: 1st David Chippindall
2nd Jim Orenshaw
3rd John Schmidli
Fastest Time: 89.76 David Chippindall
No. of competitors: 6
There have been a few recent additions to the event calendar with more to come so make sure you pencil in the confirmed events and keep an eye out for further updates.
The next event will be held at Warrnambool on April 17-18, 2021. Hope we can get a big turn-out there for some great racing. See you then.
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is an important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast viewership.
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 event was at Warrnambool on Nov 16-17. This field was in absolutely perfect condition with the club having recently upgraded all their facilities and the weather had been very kind with very green pastures and hay being cut everywhere.
Thanks to the Warrnambool Club for hosting this event and we look forward to revisiting you at the end of Feb 2020.
Results
Class – FA1
Places: 1st Andrew Davies
2nd Tom Wetherill
3rd Brian Steele
Fastest Time: 63.39 Beau Murphy
No. of competitors: 6
Class – F3T
Places: 1st Glenn Matthews
2nd Brian Steele
3rd John Schmidli
Fastest Time: 64.00 Andrew Davies
No. of competitors: 8
Places: 1st Mike Kellet
2nd John Schmidli
3rd Gary Whitbourn
Fastest Time: 96.27 Jim Orenshaw
No. of competitors: 8
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is an important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast viewership.
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.
Please note: We are looking for people willing to write event reports or photograph the events. This is an important and valuable to pylon racing in Victoria, Australia and Worldwide as this site has a vast viewership.
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.
