With the Friday being ANZAC day, it was a good chance to leave early for the trip to Warrnambool and do some test flights and setting up. The weather on the Friday was quite spectacular. Quite a few of us camped out at the field.

Saturday started off with rain but this dispersed by the time test flights started. After setting up the course, F400 started. With the first round completed, it was decided that the course needed to be re positioned due to a visibility issue with the no. 1 pylon judges. There was long grass obscuring the planes taking off, causing some confusion as to which plane to follow. If you don’t know all the plane very well, it is very easy to end up following the wrong plane if you can’t see the launch.

The course was reset and racing started again having dropped the already raced rounds. It was around 11am by the time we got going again. As a result, the number of rounds ended up being 7 rather than the usual 9 rounds for the weekend.

This was also exacerbated by having to reset the course at the last minute on the Sunday due to the predicted wind direction.

Pylons 2 and 3 judges were in place all week end which was excellent. Again this makes for legitimate results.

Thanks goes out to the members of the Warrnambool Club, Toni Axon, Nerida Matthews and all who helped out with pylon judging.

Check out the event photo gallery>>>

Results

FA1

Place getters in FA1, Tom Wetherill, Leigh Hocken & Frank Cassella (L-R)

It was good to see the team of Leigh Hocken and Frank Cassella back racing at this event and doing well. F3D is getting serious now with the next event at AMPRA being the start of the Australian team trials for the next world champs in 2015.

Places:
1st Leigh Hocken
2nd Tom Wetherill
3rd Frank Cassella

Fastest Time: 57.37 – Leigh Hocken
No. of competitors: 11
Course – 10.5 Lap

F400

Places:
1st Glenn Matthews
2nd Tom Wetherill
3rd Andrew Davies

Fastest Time: 68.71 – Glenn Matthews
No. of competitors: 10
Course – 10.5 Lap

Q500

Places:
1st Daniel Arapakis
2nd Tom Wetherill
3rd John Schmidli

Fastest Time: 96.35 – Daniel Arapakis
No. of competitors: 8
Course – 10.5 Lap

Check out the full results>>>

2013-2014 Season Championship

This event marked the end of the 2013-2014 VMPRA Season Championship after a total of 8 events for FA1 & F400 and 9 for Q500. I know from my point of view, it has added an additional element to the competition through-out the year.

FA1

2013-2014 Season Champion for FA1 – Barry Murphy

2nd place – Brian Steele
3rd place – Glenn Matthews

Congratulation to Barry Murphy who won by a huge margin even though having raced in 1 less event than the maximum. Brian Steele also raced in 1 less event and came in 2nd.

F400

2013-2014 Season Champion for F400 – Glenn Matthews

2nd place – Andrew Davies
3rd place – Daniel Arapakis

Congratulations to Glenn Matthews on winning this class. It was very close at the top with Glenn and Andrew on equal points with only 1 event left to run.

Q500

2013-2014 Season Champion for Q500 – John Schmidli

2nd place – Daniel Arapakis
3rd place – Jim Orenshaw

It was a tight battle all season between Daniel and myself and I had not expected to be able to defend my title from the previous year. Daniel announced at Warrnambool that he was going to retire from Q500 and put all his efforts into FA1 & F400. Well done Daniel. He was responsible for many of us cutting our personal bests by a considerable amount. There is nothing like strong competition to sharpening your performance.

Full Championship Results>>>

New Event

There has been the addition of a Q500, EF-1 & Sport event scheduled for Werribee on August 24, so all those interested, pencil this one in to the calendar. We have been getting quite good size turnouts at these 1 day events, especially being to close to Melbourne.

Next Events

The next event for those wanting to travel to sunny Queensland and to the 1st of the 3, F3D world champ team trials is AMPRA which is being held at Maryborough on the Queen’s birthday week end . Check out the AMPRA schedule and the QMARA website.

The next VMPRA event is at Marong near Bendigo on July 5-6. We intend to run the VMPRA AGM on the Saturday night. Time and location TBC.

Report & Photos: John Schmidli 

Much thought on the walk to & from the start line

The third VMPRA event for 2013 was held at the Warrnambool Model Aircraft Club’s field in Koroit, Victoria.  The field was in excellent condition and had been well groomed by the host club. Contestants began arriving on Friday afternoon and a large contingent set up camp at the field.  Those that arrived early enjoyed excellent weather conditions for testing and practice.

Three classes were scheduled to be flown – Q500 Sport, VIC F400 and FA1, the Australian version of FAI.  Per usual VMPRA practice, the racing was held over 10 ½ laps of the FAI course.  This reduces the requirements for the number of course workers as the cut judges at the No1 Pylon also serve as the timers.

Q500 Sport and VIC F400 were scheduled for Saturday morning.  Q500 attracted six entries and VIC F400 attracted 5 entries.  Beau Murphy also flew an F5D.  Three rounds of these classes were completed before the weather conditions deteriorated and racing was called off for the day.

At the end of three rounds, James Hurley was setting the pace in Q500 Sport.  David Axon had entered the fray and was running in second place – under the guidance of Bryan Steele, with maintenance support from Jim Orenshaw.  James’ arch rivals – John Schmidli and Daniel Arapakis suffered 200s.  Matt Carter obliterated his model when it came in contact with the ground.

In VIC F400, Glenn Matthews lead the way with his new Nelson LS powered Supercat.  He was followed by Andrew Davies and Gary Davidson.  These proved to be the final placings for this class as there was not sufficient time to complete any additional rounds on Sunday.

Sunday dawned with misty rain and low cloud cover, which delayed the start.  However, once the weather improved racing got underway with eight additional rounds of Q500 Sport and eight rounds of FA1 being completed.

Maybe one of the next generation of Q500 flyers - Helping dad!

The racing action in Q500 Sport became more intense on Sunday and times dropped significantly as conditions were much better than the day before.  At the end of 11 rounds of racing Daniel Arapakis was comfortably in first place.  His best time was 90.85 seconds, which is very impressive for this class.  John Schmidli was in second place and Davis Axon was in third place – having improved his race times by over 20 seconds!

The initial pace in FA1 was fairly conservative, as re-tuning seemed to be in order for some contestants due to the significant change in the weather conditions.  However, by Round Four the pace was picking up and the weather conditions had stabilised.  Eight rounds were run before time and daylight were starting to run out.  When the scores were tallied Tom Wetherill was in first place.  Andrew Davies finished second – a good return to form with a fresh engine.  Glenn Matthews finished in third place, posting some good times along the way.  The fastest time in FA1 was a 58.5 (for 10 ½ laps) that was posted by Beau Murphy.  The scores for the other competitors in FA1 were hampered by a few too many 200’s.

Team Murphy on the way to the start line

The Warrnambool event proved to be a great competition and VMPRA extends it thanks to the host club for allowing use of the field, providing workers to help man the course and for keeping everyone well fed during the weekend.

by Tom Wetherill

Results

FA1

This weekend was not so good for team Murphy with both Barry & Beau having issues. Very uncharacteristic for them.

1st – Tom Wetherill
2nd – Andrew Davies
3rd  – Glenn Matthews

F400

There was smaller numbers than usual particularly with James Hurley & myself not having a model to fly in this event. Tom Wetherill had an mishap when landing his Loki and broke the fuselage.

1st – Glenn Matthews
2nd – Andrew Davies
3rd – Gary Davidson

Q500

And Matt sat there working all afternoon until he had a plane to fly for the next day!

Another good turn-out for Q500 with David Axon joining in the fun. With the exception of a mishap with one of his models throwing a prop blade and being uncontrollable and going in, he had another model which flew well and he really improved his flying with the help of Brian Steel (shouting at him – David’s word) who was calling for him. David kept achieving new personal bests and ended up with 3rd place.

There was some good scrapps between myself and Daniel Arapakis with both of us getting new personal bests. 90.85 & 92.98 respectively. At this rate Daniel will be sub 90 seconds before long!

1st – Daniel Arapakis
2nd – John Schmidli
3rd – David Axon

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

Championship

FA1 – Tom Wetherill still leads but Glenn Matthews move up to second place and Beau Murphy move done to 3rd.

F400 – No change in the top 3 positions, but the points are close between Tom Wetherill, Jim Orenshaw & Andrew Davies so anything could happen at the next event.

Q500 – No change in the top 3 positions but James Hurley has drop away from the top by 4 points.

There is 1 more event for FA1 & F400 & 2 more for Q500.

The next year’s championship starts at the July 13-14 event at Bendigo so it’s now time to prepare and plan your assault on this title for your favoured class/es.

Next Event

The next event is a 1 day comp at Werribee flying Q500, EF-1 & Sports. The 1 day, introductory class races are the perfect event for coming along and trying pylon racing. There will be plenty of people on hand to assist you. You don’t need to have a special model. A 46 size trainer or low wing aircraft would be a fine model to start flying pylon.

EF-1 (Electric Formula 1) is a popular electric pylon racing class overseas. The planes are ARF models of full size formula 1 pylon racers. If you are into the electric models and want to race, this is your chance.

Bought a new Viper and ready to try racing it, come along to Werribee!

AMPRA

Also coming up is this year’s AMPRA event. This is a national pylon event and it’s being held here in Victoria, so there will be a lot of flyers from interstate. This is the big event for the year. Check the calendar for details.

John Schmidli – (Thanks to Tom Wetherill for the event report)