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The first F3F competition
for the Year 2008 was held
in Lobster Bay northeast slope on Sunday,
13
January,
2008.
The weather forecast that day was moderate
northeast wind, so the venue of the race was fixed at Lobster Bay northeast
slope. Pilots gradually arrived on the mountain top after a
difficult steep hike up! There were a few rain patch and the temperature
was really cool, but nothing could stop the enthusiastic pilots from
enjoying a day of competitive F3F flying in this otherwise beautiful
location. When the first batch of pilots arrived, they discovered that
wind direction was off normal about 20 degrees to the north and the wind
speed was just average at 4 m/s, so they knew that the race would be a
challenging slow race. There were 14 pilots participating in the race,
one pilot, Kevin, was new to F3F competitive flying. Unfortunately,
Kevin's Demo was crashed and damaged just after launch in the first
practice flight. Improper setting of aileron directions was the cause.
He had to use his backup scale glider for the contest. Last
year's Champion, Ah Mak, was so confident in his performance, so he
decided not to participate in the first race to give others a chance to
kick start first. After some hesitations in the weather condition, the
race was formally started at about 11:00am. Ko Lo Wai performed
superiorly to win the first round with a good margin only tightly
followed by Ah Kin. His New Sting F3B seemed to be well suitable for
strong crosswind condition. Unfortunately, in the second round, he made
a big mistake to crash his plane when he flew too close to the slope.
Johnson took the opportunity to ride on good wind and won the second
round. He continued to perform well though out the whole contest. Ah Kin
was steady gaining ground and took two 1000 points in round 4 and 5.
By the time at about 2:15pm when only a few pilots have flown in round
6, we received a call from a fellow pilot saying that, Law Wah, one of
our fellow HKRCSS member who was also a renown r/c helicopter pilot, was
seriously injured by an r/c helicopter in TKO. His condition was
described as critical and was struggling for his life in QEH. We were
all shocked by this striking news, and then the organizer decided to
immediately call off the contest, so that we can rush to the hospital to
show our support. We left the flying site in hurry and decided to have
the award presentation in later day. Anyway, after five rounds of
contest, the winner is Cheung Wan Kin and the best time is awarded to
Johnson Yeung.
Congratulation to the winners. Here is the
summarized scores
for the race. For details, please check the
score sheet.
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The weather is misty with light rain, the temperature is cool, these crazy pilots,
however, are still enthusiastic about the
race. Let's to accumulate some energies first! |
Who is this old man? He is Uncle Kin. Although a bit old, he is recently
in the optimal condition for wining any F3F race |
