The ninth match for the 2008 Hong Kong F3F league was scheduled to be held on Sunday, 21 September 2008 in Ma On Shan. The wind condition of the day was rather disappointing with light breeze from the east. It was a hot day and the thermal activities were very strong. In one time, a pilot can get fantastic lift even the wind speed was below 2m, in the other time, he may get a bad sink. To hold a contest in this situation was very challenging not only because of the thermal activities but also due to the potential interference with paraglider activities on Ma On Shan plateau. Indeed, it was proved to be bloody true that under this very weak wind condition, many paragliders needed to fly pass our F3F track after launch, this created a lot of interruptions to the contest as the r/c pilot on the track needed to abort the run and steer his glider away to avoid collision.  Here is a short report on the first day contest.

Most r/c pilots arrived at the Ma On Shan plateau before 9:30am. The wind was basically in an average of two meter per second from the east, but the thermal activities were very strong. The contest was eventually started at 11:15am with the resulting times at seventies to eighties. The wind picked up a bit at noon to four meters, but somehow the thermals have gone and the times just improved marginally to sixties. The wind died again after 2:30pm together with the thermal, so after a 30 minute wait, the contest was called off. Finally, only three rounds were completed. Mak took the lead by a large margin.  A vote was carried to decide to hold a continuation race next week.

The continuation race was held in Robin's Next lower north-facing slope one week later on 28 September, 2008. The wind was northerly with speed varying between 3 to 6 meter per second. Three more pilots joined the race, one of them is a visiting pilot from Switzerland. Due to strong turbulence in this inland slope, the results had large standard deviation. Sometimes, the difference between the top and lowest times can be as high as 30 seconds. The contest was started at 11:30am and completed at 3:45pm after the wind died down. There were some casualties as a result of poor landing. Ah Pong's Lanita, Mak's RaceM, Ah So's both RaceM and Demo, and Donny's Demo all suffered from some degrees of damage. C.M. was lucky because his Extreme was crash-landed but suffered no damage. A total of 6 additional rounds were completed, so together with the result of the last 3 rounds completed a week ago, this month league scores were computed based on 9 rounds. The champion of this month league race is Ah Mak and the best time was awarded to Angus with a 51 seconds which is so far the fastest time for the year 2008. Angus also got the 1st runner-up prize while the 2nd runner-up prize went to Ah Wing. Congratulation! The summary of the score table is shown below, for details, please check the score sheet.
 

It's a hot day in Ma On Shan. The wind is very disappointing

Ah Kin had bad luck recently, so he decided to paint himself with white gel cream to give him good luck

Allan was helping as CD

Fat Fai was interested in this model

One, two, three, Fat Fai was helping to launch

Allan was so concentrated in the run

Markus from Switzerland was flying his SpiderX

The 2nd runner-run prize went to Ah Wing

The 1st  runner-run prize went to Angus

Mak is the champion