RC Combat in Ohio
by Don Grissom
dongrissom@hilltopflyers.com
It has been a slow start for me in RC Combat this year. Many contests have been happening in other parts of the country, so I have been working on a new workshop that will help me construct new Combat airplanes. I was able to acquire some of the designs and equipment that belonged to Chris Handegard, with which I hope to create some of the Scale Combat airplanes that he had produced.
Bob Loescher has written about RC Combat in Cincinnati. Every year, his club puts on many one-day events. These meets are a great way to get RC Combat started in your club. Bob also has a great way to fly Combat when you do not have enough people for multiple heats. Here is his report.
After several weeks of brutal Ohio spring weather, we had a beautiful spring day for RC Combat! The Cincinnati Airmasters RC Flying Club has a beautiful site in the North Bend area of the Ohio River. The 10 pilots who competed were a little rusty, but ready to enjoy the day. Mike Clodfelder and I spent the winter months flying online with Streamer Cut on a RealFlight simulator.
One of the pilots was Brian Delahunty, who is a new RC Combat contest director (CD). He and Mike Edwards will be sharing duties at the six Combat Challenge events that they will host this year. In addition to being a new CD, Brian has two sons and another family member, Mike Piche, on the pilots’ list. We also had a couple of good pilots return: Dave Davis from Indiana, and Joe Rhue from Kentucky.
To keep from having 10 pilots up at the same time in the first meet of the year, and wanting more than five, we elected to use the ABC grouping, which is an easy system without running a matrix program. You divide the pilots into three equal groups: A, B, and C. In the first heat, A and B fly; in the second heat, A and C fly; and in the third heat, B and C fly. After three heats, all pilots have flown two rounds. If we had divided the pilots into two heats per round, it would have required four heats to get in two rounds for all pilots.
I brought an old camera to take pictures, but many of the photos vanished. Brian supplied me with some of his wife’s photos.
I had a lot of technical problems at a meet in northern Texas during the third weekend in March, and it wasn’t until the fourth round at the contest in Cincinnati that I found the problem and took measures to fix it. As I write this, I have a contest in Lima, Ohio, in two weeks and hope to only have one more issue to resolve for that event.
I test-flew a P-40 after the event because I had a beautiful field and had worked on it after problems at the Texas gathering. After three attempted launches, I needed to find out what the issue was or fly one of my veteran designs.
My wife said that she felt bad because I had an awful time. I told her that I had a wonderful time with old friends and beautiful weather. The only thing better is to have some streamers to chase. Even a bad weather day becomes a good day when you have old friends and new streamers.
SOURCES:
Radio Control Combat Association (RCCA)
www.rccombat.com
Cincinnati Airmasters RC Flying Club
www.airmasters.info
