Processing Day & Practice Day 4

Alarm, shower & the usual fine Breakfast at 7am.

I had some paper work to complete then we loaded up and headed to the main site for a practice flight. I tried to get a hold of John to let him know the days plans but no joy via messenger. 

Michi is loaded and ready to go.

A relaxed morning as we waited for our chance to fly. Kelly and I headed over to the registration table and we are first in line... actually there was no line! Paola check over the team's submissions and we settled our account. Documents checked and copied, welcome items received and we were done. 

Kelly at the registration desk.

Back at the flight line the guys finally took to the sky. Michi was up first and flew his back up Accuracy in order to get it trimmed and ready should his primary have an issue. John arrived and was the best dressed guy on the field with his Team Canada 🇨🇦 uniform on! He rocked it.

John called for Henry who then put up a solid flight with a nice relaxed pace.  He looked rested and very comfortable on the flight line this morning. 

Chad was up next and had his best P-19 round since his arrival. Very solid flight all around and I have no trouble saying he is flying the best that I have witnessed.

Flightline A - Judges station

Looking West

Ready box/pit area.

 We then stayed and had a nice buffet lunch at the restaurant. Great selection of foods to try out. After that we relaxed and I took some pictures of various planes until it was our turn to process.

This thing is huge!!!

They started calling for Canada about 20 minutes ahead of our planed processing time. Even though most of the guys had the planes ready we pushed back on the demand. Chad was still assembling his B model as Michi’s was weighed and measured. 

Enrico measures Michi's back up.

Henry and John await their turn.

New stickers for Henry's Fantasista

 Our planes were all properly sticker for removable parts and the FAI Stickers attached but they had new stickers with competitors unique ID and either model A or B. This created a bit of a problem as Michi was flying Model "K" as his primary and Chad had his Model "C" as his primary.  “We have no K or C so you must change” was the instructions from the officials.  Ok so we did that but we were able to change Michi’s to a “K”....  but not Chad’s so it has double stickers.


M Akimoto
Weights          Plane "K"  4995gr     Plane "B" 4915gr

Sound             Plane "K" 88.5db with APC  Plane "B" 86.9 with Falcon

H Piorun

Weights         Plane "A"  4960gr      Plane "B" 4930gr

Sound = Plane A 92.2db with Falcon Contra  Plane B 89.1db with Falcon Contra

C Northeast
Weights        Plane "A" (also C) 4880gr    Plane "B" 4895gr
Sound           Plane "A" (also C) 82.3db with APC   Plane "B" 85.4db with APC


All planes met the measurement requirements except for the spinner dimensions. This is the first time they have checked this and the contras will all fail this test due to the hub design.  I suspect they are not enforcing this as they all “passed” 🤷‍♂️

Chad's voltage is checked.

Sound and voltage checks all passed with Henry’s Element hitting the hi mark at 92.2db  (max 94.0db) and Chad had the lowest with Model B only hitting 82.3 on the sound meter.

Once processing was completed we posed for a team photo before packing up and heading back to the Airbnb. Michi stayed behind to get another flight in and converse with the Japanese team. 

Team Canada

We walked up the street and ordered pizza then brought it back to our Airbnb. Michi arrived back but opted for sushi at the local establishment. 

The long day came to an end... off to bed.

Practice Day 3

The team met up for our now usual 7 am breakfast and then loaded up the cars for the trek to the practice site. 

Kelly and I went over to the Casa Bianca World's site to check on the location for both processing and registration tomorrow.  (It is an easy 8 minute drive from our AirBnB) With our dates and times now published, we wanted to fully scope out the amazing facility. 

Andrew Palmer gets ready for a morning sortie.

We wandered around the parking lot meeting up with Andrew Palmer from New Zealand and Lassi Nurila from Finland.  After a bit of snooping, we discovered the registration table and met Paola Battinia the event secretary.  She was just setting up her station for registration so we will be back later tomorrow to officially register the team. This place is very pretty with beautiful gardens and hedges, kids play area, adults play area (RC field!), a bar and restaurant and some zoo animals as well! Even some full scale jets! I'll have more on this in the coming days.

We then headed to the practice field and met up with John and the rest of the crew.  Lots of pilots this morning so much slower pace. France, Russia, Brazil, Britain and Canada all took turns flying.  I took some pictures of the other team's planes as fights progressed.

Nice to see our flag flying! Great hosts at this practice site!

As we waited to fly, I managed to get most all the paper work done for the registration of the team. This is when they will check FAI licenses, Specification sheets for each airplane and reconcile any outstanding monies owed.  

Unknown to us, John had stopped and picked up some croissants for a treat and sandwiches and so we all enjoyed a nice lunch mid day.  The guys all got in a second flight but Henry was done at this point. The extra flying for the Grand Prix was taking it's toll. Kelly and I decided to return back early so Henry followed us home. 

Back at the AirBnB, Henry started unboxing his back up plane. All the guys will need to have both planes checked at processing for compliance. They will be weighed, measured and sound checked to ensure the meet the rules which are straight forward... can not exceed 5KG, can not exceed 2 meters in length or wingspan and cannot produce more than 94db of sound. (electric powered aircraft can not exceed 42.56 volts)

The boxes are a work of art.

Looks like it made the trip just fine. 

Henry is ready for processing.

Henry had the planes now ready to load up so, after spending a few minutes working on the loading puzzle, we soon had Henry's two planes safely in place. A bit of foam here and there and he is set!

  

Dinner was just down the street at Maragoncello... it was excellent Italian food $$

Also good news for the Japanese Team as their plane boxes have been found and retrieved! 

That's it! My bed is calling .....   official processing tomorrow afternoon for Team Canada

Practice - Day 2

06:30 alarm and off to shower... it's dejavu!

Breakfast with the team then we headed off to Site 6 for practice.  Kelly and Agnes are taking the VW and going to the lake and "possibly" some shopping today. 😱

I rode shotgun with Chad out to the practice field and watched the action from the TM’s chair :-)  John met us there and we assembled the planes in the back parking lot. The front was filled up with Team France 🇫🇷 

We watched Arnaud Poyet, Jr pilot Sasha Muller, Christophe Paysant Le Roux (with his new Oreka) and Cedric Carayon and then our guys followed with Michi, Chad and Henry all getting in a practice flights. As both Henri and Michi have been hard at the flying since last Thursday, I had them take it easy today with only a few flights and a more relaxed pace. Well I tried to!

The Russian team was also present and the Japanese team members came buy for a field inspection. Unfortunately no Japanese planes made the trip according to my “source”. The rest are inbound on the next flight. I am also told no YS this year. 😱

Unfortunately Henry had a bit of a hard landing and cracked his right landing gear leg. Within minutes we connected with Mark Atwood who, in turn, connected with the South African team and arranged for some CF tow to make repairs. Big shout out to Andrea Stockwell who brought the repair supplies all the way from S.A.!!

Henry works his magic!

We were quickly able to return the favor by transporting some motor mount parts from the French team back to Andrew Jesky who was helping out the South African junior. John is queued up to make the swap back at his hotel. Everyone wins!

In the meantime, Mark Atwood is trying to track down the shipment of Thunder Power batteries for both US and Canadian pilots. They are in the black hole of “customs”. 

Update at 19:00 local: No batteries yet, No Japanese planes yet! We relaxed around the yard and then went into town for some dinner & gelato

Chad packs up after a nice F-19 round.

Galactic

Off to fly!

Cool and comfortable at our AirBnB.

The team also received our Processing and Official practice times as follows....

Our official practice will be at site B.  Off to bed.

Full Practice Day 1

We were up at 7am for breakfast.  It was very good.. especially the coffee!

Both Michi and Henry headed off to the practice field with the rest of us hitting up the local grocery store for supplies (water,  lunch makings, etc). After a few emails I finally got in touch with John Bentley and he was also headed to the practice field. 

An hour later we all met up with the entire 2019 team together for the first time. We introduced ourselves to the local RC folks that manned the practice field. Through broken "Italish" I thanked them for letting us come and use the great facilities. The guys flew,  everyone critiqued, and the sun baked the heck out of us.. 36º!!! Luckily the breeze helped keep the heat in check.

The planes at rest.

The whole team finally together.

Very fitting.. except no rain... only Sun!

We finished up and headed home but first a stop at the local electronics store to get our EU Sim Cards for our phones. It took a good 30 minutes but we now have 50GB of data for 9 Euro (plus a one time 10 Euro setup fee) each.. Includes unlimited texting... but no phone calls.. perfect (sorry crew scheduling!)

Pizza night Italian style!

Dinner was a short 8 minute walk up the street to the local pizzeria... very good too!  Off to the rack... again.

On the ground in Italy.

Our flight over to MXP was uneventful and we got off the plane fairly quickly. Unfortunately our bags took some time as the Italian "pace" kicked in. The rental car pickup was straight forward for us and after waiting for Chad's car to be washed (?) we were on our way.

Approximately 100 minutes later we arrived at our AirBnB.  Chad set to work unpacking his plane and charging a couple packs for some planned flights at the World's site.  We got settled into the place and then headed out to grab some supplies (cooler, chairs, etc.) and some dinner. (Burger King)

We met up with Michi, Henry, Norm Morrish, Russell Edwards and Andrew Palmer to name a few, at the world's site. Chad managed a flight while Andrew sorted out some fail safe issues with his plane.

Andrew Palmer gets ready to go.

We wrapped up about 8pm and headed back to the AirBnB for a debrief and some preliminary planning for tomorrow. Chad also made some wire repairs to his electrical setup after experiencing issues after the assembly. All good now!

Off to the rack.