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. Monday August 24 2015

Monday August 24, start of the competion, after the very succesfull airshow opening day yesterday.
This competition, the competition order changed, each pilot wil fly first, and then go to static, since static takes a lot more time, which in the past meant the 2 schedules could colide. That will now be prevented.

The day started, after a quick and wholesome breakfast with the pilots briefing at 0830 and a calibration flight at 0900. Then the competition started, with a bad start.
The first pilot, from Thailand, had to be moved to the last start place, as he was admitted in hospital 2 days ago with high fever, and was after his return not yet able to fly.

The next pilot, and only teammember, of Malta crashed during landing approach, and the plane burst into flames when it crashed in the field. The issue was a flap not deploying.

The dutch team was in full swing. Hans was #8 with the F-100 and made a reasonable good flight. Later in the afternoon it was Bert's turn, but that was a short exercise.
Immideately after starting the take off run, the plane swayed left and right, and then went with a harch turn of the runway into the grass. After the moddel was collected, it turned out that the tires had came of the rims, the rubber is to soft to stay upright, keep in mind that the plane weighs 16 kg. The side movement caused so much bent thet the rubber hit the leg, which caused the wheel to brake and this turned the plane into the gras.

Later that afternoon, by borrowing tools and material from other teams, Wim, Marco and Donald started the fixes to the wheels, the plan is to cut the tires in half, glue in a ring of epoxy plate, and glue the 2 halves together, and also fix the wheel itself. This all has to be ready before 1000 tomorrow, as the plane is scheduled for static.
Tomorrow evening a test flight is planned, to be ready for the second round on Wednesday.

Raanan was scheduled to fly at 17:27, but this did not go smooth. A maneuvre as not correctly listed on the flight sheets, after the engine had started this was noticed by the flight judges.
Then there was some confusion to get the maneuvres correctly sorted, but this did cause for some more confusion during the flight, so several points got lost.

The rest of the day went fairly uneventfull, luckily no futrther losses of models.

The weather was okay, after a cool start it was sunny weather, in the evening at 1900 a strong wind and rain, later in the evening the wind died down, and a drizzle continued for the evening and night.

The dutch team is nearing it's full strength, the last pilot, Wim, who lost his plane 4 weeks back, joined for the rest of the week, and also Han Kleijn, pilot in 2005 and 2007, joined for a few days, but as he never had camped before, and the rainy weather made him decide to not occupy his newly bought tent, but book a last minute hotel.

Also Mary, Hans' wife joined. Tomorrow Sylvia, Marco's wife, will arrive and then we are complete.

In the evening, after the teammanagers meeting everyone, including Jim of the US team joined in camp Holland and enjoyed hamburgers and sausages. It was a nice group of people with good stories and many laughes.

     
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