Updates from the World Space Modeling Championships
The 2008 FAI World Space Modeling Championships were held in August in Lleida, Spain. George Gassaway—one of America’s top model rocketeers, and a member of the U.S. team—qualified in three events this year. And, he covered the entire event for the November/December issue of LAUNCH Magazine. But you won’t have to wait until then to see how the American team fared. George posted a series of entries covering each day's events.
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One of the primary differences between NAR and FAI competition is in the recovery of the models. In the NAR you are basically on your own -- either individually or with your club -- to recover your models. In FAI competition you recover models as a team. Since you have to make 3 flights with only 2 models, getting one back is critical. Nearly everyone on the team was out on recovery at one time or another.
In Lleida the flying field was a small airstrip located in the middle of a wide area of plowed fields. We're not sure what they grew there, but there were some remnants of grain and alfalfa. Most of the fields had been relatively recently plowed, and their consistency was close to flour -- you stepped in the dirt and it went over your ankles. The land generally sloped up to a large ridge east of the flying area -- this ridge area is what we called deep-deep. Most of the time this area was downwind, but the wind shifted every day, forcing us to change our locations (especially on Tuesday for the S-4, boost glider, competition).
We gave our deep locations colorful names -- "The Reservoir", "The High Orchard", "Hadrian's Wall", "The Cisterns", "The Bridge", "Next to the Naked Guys." Most of the deep-deep recovery locations were about 1-1/2 mile downwind of the launch area -- for some of the models not nearly far enough. There were usually members of other teams close by where we stationed ourselves. The Chinese team was able to field a large recovery crew and were always very friendly. The British team was usually nearby, too.
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In this final report, I am making full use of the Photo Captions feature, something I did not do much of in previous reports. So please read all the captions as you view the large versions of the photos. In some cases the captions just say who is who or what is what. But in others, they tell some important pieces of the story that are best told with the photo rather than with the story here.
I have referred before to members of "The Team". Well, that was a catch-all reference. It goes beyond just the fliers who flew rockets. It included pretty much everyone who went, including family members and supporters. Even Kevin Johnson, who was an official Timer for the contest, and could not help during the contest flying, helped greatly with areas of Team logistics such as the buses that took us to-from the Barcelona hotel and airport, and to-from Llieda and Barcelona, and making sure nobody was missed. Also, Ed Pearson, the U.S. FAI representative, who was one of the three FAI Jury members. Now, of course, as an FAI jury member, Ed was not officially part of the U.S. team, he was an impartial judge who could do nothing to help the team. But outside of his official FAI duties during the WSMC, he was and is part of our group.
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There will be two more WSMC reports. This one, and a wrap-up analysis, odds and ends, and extra photos tomorrow.
This report is pretty much for posting image files of the WSMC results.
Some of you might wonder with a major contest going on, why don't we know who on the other teams is doing what? Well, in a competition like this, there is rarely a one-on-one situaiton to keep track of. You are flying with three members of your team competing against 19 other countries who have up to three members on their teams, potentially 57 fliers. Besides, you are trying to do YOUR best. For the duration events, you are trying to hit thermals to reach the "max" time scores, which are 180 seconds for S6A (Streamer), S4a (Boost Glide), and S9A (Copter), and 300 seconds for S3A (Parachute). As long as you yourself can hit the max scores, nobody else is beating you, at worst you are tied with the others who are also "maxing". If it is a day without thermals, then maxes may be very hard to impossible to get, then you hope your models have better "dead air" time than the other flier's models do, so you will total the best score of the three flights.
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For Thursday, August 28th from Lleida to Barcelona, and Friday, August 29th from Barcelona back to the USA.
Thursday morning in Lleida, the U.S. group prepared for the bus ride to Barcelona.
Before leaving, a few of us went up to the roof of the hotel to take some photos with the city of Lleida in the background. The background includes the Santes Creus monastery, which is over 800 years old. That monastery was even visible from the flying field, miles away.
Greg Stewart, myself, and Kevin Kuczek got a team shot with our S8EP ( Rocket Glide) models. And I posed for a photo with my models from S8 and S9 (Copter).
Nick Rivieccio used my camera to take those photos. If anyone is interested, my camera is a Canon S5-IS.
Finally, we got onto the bus back to Barcelona. A couple of hours later, we were back to the hotel we’d been in the previous week. After settling in, a lot of the group did some final touring and got a few souvenirs to take back.
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Report for Wednesday, August 27th, in Lleida. (Posting delayed until arriving in Newark airport)
Wednesday morning, a lot of the WSMC participants went to the "Port Aventura" theme park, in the Tarragona province, on the coast. It has a number of large rides, including a massive looping twisting roller coaster in the Chinese section of the park . Everyone had a pretty good time there.
Wednesday night was the WSMC Banquet. But before the banquet, the medals were awarded from Monday and Tuesday's events, for the individuals and teams, in the Junior and Senior categories. In addition to the official FAI medals, there were also some very nice acrylic trophy-plaques made up, for each medal winner. That night was when I received the silver medal and plaque for 2nd in S8E-P.
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