model starts heading up at 30 degrees or less fly straight until you can start an in- side loop at the starting altitude. Most like- ly the eight will end up 15–20 feet off the ground. So practice doing them no more than 5 feet up. After you’ve hit the ground for the third or fourth time it’s obvious why you don’t use the best planes or motors for this. This kind of practice will also show you just how well balanced the sizes of the inside and outside loops are. I’ve put more than one plane into the ground because the inside loop was 2 feet larger than the out- side loop.
Mark Rudner and Andrew Nadein get set to launch Alex Prokofiev at the 2012 Nats (above). Alex won the match and ended up beating Andrew in the finals in a kind of anticlimactic shut-off vs. the wind duel. Fuel shutoffs have become another tactical tool to win a match. Bob Nelson, from Sig Mfg. (below), made a last fling effort in Speed Limit at the Nats. He eked out one win and had a great time. Have wondered if Sig will ever come out with an ARF Combat model, hmmm?
The defensive eight turns into a Give Up a Cut eight if you overturn the loops, particu- larly if you hit 45 degrees with your plane vertical. Your opponent will be just coming out of his partial loop and will have a clean shot at your streamer. In fact, flying your plane at around 45 degrees might be called “the sitting duck” position. Roughly between 30 and 60 degrees altitude the streamer weight, centrifugal force, and the air stream put the streamer pretty much directly be- hind the plane, on the radius of the flight path. That makes it much easier for your op- ponent to get lined up for a cut. Conversely, the prettiest ones are when
you manage to finagle your opponent into climbing vertically around 45 degrees when you just happen to be 10–15 feet behind him and can cut across and snip a foot or two off his streamer.
Other solo practice
Just fly upside down for a full tank. For fun and games, throw in starting and stop- ping
various maneuvers from inverted
flight. It’s a good time to practice flying with your handle horizontal, fingers down, or thumb to the left. When the down line hits something (opponent maybe) the plane will climb rather than dump into the ground. Another solo practice tip, from Igor Tri- fonov again, is to bring a book out to the cen- ter of the circle. Open it up down by your waist and try to fly various eights and loops while reading with your head down. Make sure it is an interesting article so you don’t get distracted by the maneuvers and look up for the plane. I found a couple of interesting youtube clips, both of some pretty good flyers making a flight blindfolded: http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=qXXLv3HkWxg and http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWMistcR1rs It’s a pretty good trick, especially the take- off. You’ll notice both pilots tend not to move around much. They both are pretty good cut- ting a sharp inside corner down low, not so much for outside corners. The landing seemed to end in a bonk. Understandable when the plane is light on the lines. I won- der if anyone has tried to fly a match blind- folded? An interesting thought. If you can’t find these urls (which worked for me) just search for F2D Combat and your favorite pi- lot’s name. There are a lot of interesting clips up there.
FLYING MODELS 47
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