Semi-Finals

Up for breakfast and then hit the road to Site 1 for Chad’s first of two flights today.  The competition ramps up as the 30 pilots vie for a top ten finish and a birth into the finals on Saturday.

The venue has a large roof over it and this will come in handy if rains that are forecast start to appear. We arrived and Chad already had his planes ready. The rest of the team also arrived and we got caught up on travels etc that took place yesterday and the goings on around the flight line.

F-15 started right on time at 08:30 and soon Chad was up. He had a nice looking round going (to my eye) but missed the snap exit on the last element. He scored a normalized 917 and would have to wait until the afternoon session on the other flight line before his second flight.

Chad flies the stick plane through the sequence.

We watched several others fly and then Andrew Jesky was up. The had some sort of scoring delay then he took to the sky. It seemed rushed to me with a more close in compressed style but he scored a 979 to put him in second at that time behind Gernot Bruckman (991). Liechtenstein’s Stefan Kaiser caught them both and he sits at 1000 right at the moment. (10:55 am local)

Andrew Jesky's Proteus Duo

Update 11:00 am Local

The skies opened up and a steady rain is now falling.  This would normally stop me but they are flying through it as I type. Lets hope those esc’s and servos keep working!

Update 11:55

Frenchman Loic Burbaud had esc issues after his spin and landed early. I feel his pain! Jason Schulman just flew and had a solid round in light rain. He missed his snap exit a bit on the last maneuver but still scored 988.

Over on Line 2 it looks like Japan’s Tetsou Onda has taken the top spot from CPLR… for now:-)
It’s lunch break and the jets are ripping up the sky. Internet is spotty so I am having to hotspot off my phone for now. More later….

Scores are here but you need to click on "Semi Finals" to get the correct page http://www.f3a-wc2015.ch/Ranking.aspx?Startlist=True&lang=EN&contid=31&mm=0&sm=31

Lunch Break and Line change for the pilots....

Update 14:50
We are at flight line 2 now in preparation for Chad's 2nd flight.  Bad news from flight line #1 has Joseph Szczur's plane overweight after his 2nd flight. His plane was 5052 grams (Limit is 5050 grams) so his flight was relegated to the dropped bin. Apparently he used back up packs that weigh a bit too much. Bummer as it was a nice flight as well. A hard lesson but it did not effect the outcome as I understand it.

Update 15:30

Chad just flew a very nice round but only received a 900 score. It still needs to be normalized but it is what it is. We will discuss it later during the debrief session. We will now watch Andrew fly as he is next up. The scores have been normalized and TBL applied to ensure accurate scores

Chad readies for flight #2

Ready to start!

Chad's scores appear about 5 seconds after the completion of the maneuver.

Update 15:50

Long time flyer Wolfgang Matt has just flown his last F-15 flight as he is retiring from active competition. He had many people congratulating him and then hounding him for pictures! :-)

Wolfgang takes the bib off for the last time.

Team Lichtenstein

One more picture....

Oh wait... one more picture! :-)

Andrew had a very solid flight and scored a 995 and is currently 3rd. His team should be very happy with the result as both he and Jason will be moving on for sure. Brett still has to fly on line #1 but has a big task ahead to make it. Joseph is on the bubble right now.

Chad's planes are ready with Andrew following a couple spots back.

Update: 16:15

We bolted back to Line 1 to catch the last of the group on that site. Brett had flown and Marc Ruban was up as the last pilot to fly.

Update 16:24

Semi final flights now all completed. The scores have been normalized and TBL applied to ensure accurate scores :-) The top ten will fly off in a new contest featuring two F-15 flights and two separate unknown flights tomorrow.

Team Japan all flew on the same line today.

We headed back to the hotel and then dinner. On our return, Andrew and Kevin were going over the unknown schedules and Mark was hunting down some stick planes.... I think :-)  They obviously enjoyed a delicious dinner as well. We said goodnight, wishing him well in the morning and left them to study into the wee hours.

Dinner and a movie? Maybe not.

 We have a few jobs to do in the morning then we will head out to watch the action.  Looking forward to it!