(L to R) Dave Reisinger, Jon Garber, and Gary Fogel with their TigRES 4 models. This one of Jon's original designs for F3L competition.
By Mike Bergerson
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The sun is shining, the winds are light and variable, and we all pulled our ballast from our little wooden contraptions. If you wanted a perfect soaring day, today is that day! Wow, we have lift that isn't accompanied by massive sink. It’s just normal sink, giving those who managed good launches the extra opportunity to go the other way in hopes of finding their 6 minutes of air. This avoids the often-used excuse, “I went right, when I should have gone left.”
Many times while spotting for one of our team pilots, we’d see planes going up in several different thermals scattered all around the field. I did put an extra ounce of ballast back in, just to get that little bit of extra speed to search a bit faster. It's a great feeling when you can direct your teammate to an easy ride and watch the elation when they nail down that 6-minute/99-point landing… missed the 100-point landing by this much > <… LOL.
There was also this thing going around about not having to scroll to enter your landing points. The scoring window showed a choice of 100 through 96 points without having to scroll down to a lesser points choice. It was a fun challenge and wonderful way to get to know your neighbors. “How'd you do?” was tossed around a bit between groups. I made a couple of new friends over this myself.
As high-starts do, they sometimes break or get tangled. The teams are allowed to use another open high-start in those instances when your team's pilot needs to “relight” for another go at getting his time. It was awesome to see other teams helping get high-starts to their neighbors in those situations. F3L is all about teamwork to achieve individual goals and reach the combined goal of the top team. You bond with the guys on your team and get to know your neighbors. It truly is a wonderful sailplane community that we belong to.
When it was all said and done, we packed up our makeshift forts and headed back to the pits for the awards ceremony. CD Jon Garber honored the winning pilots in descending order from the top ten down. The top three finishers were awarded medals. Our new AMA/LSF Nationals Champion for F3L is Jonathan Garber who finished with a perfect score of 11,000 points over 11 rounds. In second was Josh Glaab, and in third place was Mike Lachowski. Enjoy the photos.
It's a shame we never did find any bottle rockets.
Blue Skies!
Mike Lachowski gets his third place medal from CD John Garber.
Micky Nowell placed 4th.
Gary Fogel placed 5th.
Gavin Trussel placed 6th.
John McNeil finished in 7th place.
Dave Reisinger placed 8th.
Steven Wilcox Sr. placed 9th.
Ed Dumas finished in 10th place.
F3L Scores
