2008 Hong Kong F3F League

2008 Hong Kong F3F League - Match 5
Robin's Nest East-Facing Slope, May 4, 2008

The fifth match for the 2008 Hong Kong F3F league was successfully held on Sunday, 4 May 2008 in Robin's Nest east-facing slope. The weather forecast for the day was light south-easterly wind with fog in the morning. The decision to hold the race in Robin's Nest was partly due to the uncertainty of wind direction in the afternoon. Robin's Nest mountain range which is located in north-east corner of the territory has cultivated many flyable slopes in all most all directions. The newly discovered southeast-facing slope there is definitely one of the best for model glider flying with wind and landing condition comparable to Ma On Shan slope. Pilots gradually arrived at the mountain top car park at about 9am in the morning. The mountain top was still covered by dense fog at that time even though there were sunshine in the low land. Decision was quickly made to move the whole team emeses to the southeast-facing slope on the other side of the mountain top to set up the course and wait for the fog to clear up. The 5 minute hike from the car park is along a leveled hiking trial. When we arrived at the southeast-facing slope, we found that the fog was about to clear up, however, the wind direction was straight east, that means the wind for this southeast slope would be too off to normal! When we were half way to setup the course hopping that the wind direction will be shifted more to southerly later, the brave Ah Kin immediately assembled his Skorpion and threw it out for a virgin flight. He soon found out that his plane was sinking like a brick! The wind was too off normal! Suggestion was made to move further to the east-facing slope which is only 150m away to the north. The decision was proved to the correct after Stanley test-flew his Aris with very promising lift!

The contest was finally started at about 12:00pm with 10 pilots participating. The wind was at an average of 5 m/s initially and dropped gradually below 3m/s at about 2pm. After several intermittent waits, the contest was called off at about 3:15pm. A total of 4 rounds of contest was successfully completed. After the wind died down, the temperature was so high under the hot sun. Most of us who didn't expect to have strong sunlight today found out that they had serve sun burn! Anyway, the contest although was short was indeed a close contest. Ah Mak took the first round with a convincing lead but soon to be taken over by Stanley with a 59.37s run in the second round which lead him to be crowned the speedy man title. Donny did very well in the first round and took the third round. Ah Kin again came up lately and took the forth round. The champion of the day is Stanley, Ah Mak is the 1st runner-up and Donny is the 2nd runner-up. This is the first time Donny has won a place in the top threes with a trophy. Congratulation! The summary of the score table is shown below, for details, please check the score sheet.