Piker Racing, TEMAC Style.

[Papa]

In response to Andy's somewhat mis-understandable weather ramblings we did, in fact, have a race yesterday. There were some dark clouds but with typical TEMAC camaraderie and generosity of spirit we found a silver lining. Here's how it came about.


Eight Pilots showed up with seven racers. Michael had experienced a sudden and catastrophic motor failure during the week that turned his racer into a high speed lawn dart and so was sans a racer. Frank, with his usual generosity, provided a loaner for Michael. Stephane and Eric were running late but more of them later.


Frank set up and did a trimming flight with the loaner prior to Michael's arrival. It was the most erratic, even for Frank, flight we have ever seen and a miracle that he manged to bring it down more or less intact. Michael arrived and Frank had reworked the model to where he was confident he had fixed the problem. This was tricky as they did not know what the problem, in fact, was.


Second flight with Michael standing by was not much of an improvement on the first but was decidedly shorter in duration. By this stage they were beginning to think that Frank's ancient "8 track" transmitter and receiver were retiring. So gathering all the bits and pieces and switch to a more modern 2.4 system they built a racer. No way was I going to do a tech inspection on the resulting racer. It was decided that Frank would fly the first race and Michael the second and I would cross the bridge if both moved to the final.


Remember the Hagen brothers? well being a little late they were hurrying to get their racers assembled and do a test flight for trimming purposes. Quicker than I can type both flew and crashed. Gathering up the pieces and with copious amounts of Scotch Tape they had a joint entry. Being Race Director I was exposed to many many opportunities to practice rules flexibility. They decided that Stephan would fly the first race and Eric the second.


We decided to use two cones rather than set up the pylons in case we had to break camp in a hurry. That was prescient. Julian swung the Canadian Flag and we got a somewhat ragged start. The racing looked good and the result was Simon, Frank, Greg and Stephan. All racers survived which says much for the ingenuity of our members. And then the curse of Andy fell upon us and we just about made our cars before the deluge.


We had fun, we had people sharing and we had great spirit. I called the race and will reschedule for another time.


Another great day at Rogo Field, what more can I say?


Jack.

[Crazyflyer]

Well to be exact only my plane crashed and Eric's motor decided to learn ballet and split (at least the casing split!)    and we were able to do a quick motor swap which did fly... although not very fast 
Actually about that, I noticed that when we play lawn darts with our plane too many times, often the motors are not as efficient, can someone explain what the reason is and can it be fixed? (is the the casing that is bent? magnets out of place? wires worn? shaft seems ok?!?)
My nice Mega 16/15/3 doesn't seem to have the zip that Eric's motor had prior to splitting?!?! And since it isn't a cheap motor I would rather try to have it fixed.
Any explanations would be appreciated.