HIGHEST FLIGHT,
LOWEST SCORE
By David P. Andersen | www.mnbigbirds.com
Photo by Craig Christensen
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IN 1977, DAVID P. ANDERSEN (Minneapolis, Minnesota) flew his prototype Borne Free sailplane (from RC Modeler plans) in the biggest and most prestigious Soaring contest at the time, the Suds City Soar-In, at a sod farm near Milwaukee. He wrote:
It was a cloudy day with few thermals, so I waited for a lull in the wind, which was a sign that a thermal was nearby, before I hurled my eager craft by electric winch. Upon towline release, the model cruised upwind in search of some lift. I was lucky; there was good lift and I circled in it.
Borne Free tended to naturally drift toward the center of a thermal when turning, so it easily clung to the thermal as it drifted downwind. The lift was small in diameter and not very powerful, but Borne Free gained a lot of altitude. I circled over the other contestants and spectators as it drifted downwind. The contest’s announcer drew everyone’s attention to my sailplane overhead and summarized it well by saying, “That, folks, is what it’s all about!”
At last, my sailplane was as far downwind as I dared let it go, lest I lose sight of it, so I left the thermal and dashed directly to the landing spot in a shallow dive. I popped the spoilers on final approach and touched down right on target to score, by far, the longest flight of the day. My landing was greeted with applause by my fellow modelers and I waved back a thank-you.
Unfortunately, we were flying the 2-minute Precision task, in which a point was awarded for every second of flight up to 2 minutes, but then a point was deducted for every second after 2 minutes. My flight was almost 20 minutes in duration, so I achieved, by far, the largest negative score of the contest.
Oh, but it was worth it.
