World Championships First Day...

Up at 7ish, off to a quick breakfast, and into the vans at 8 to go over to the hall to get ready for the first round… Round 1 was supposed to start at 9am, but not too surprisingly, things were running behind schedule… And the whole day got pushed back an hour… Round 1 from 10 to 2, lunch from 2 to 4, and Round 2 from 4 to 8… The flying order for the first round was set to Ray, Kagan, and Sanborn…

Nick launched and went up fast, getting to the ceiling in around 6 minutes, and started getting close to one of the vents, and put his balloon up to keep it from going in… Unfortunately, he did prevent that, but his flight hung up around 7 minutes when it got wedged between two of the girders… John launched his flight, and had to steer a few times, but never got much more than 3/4 of the way up… Flight ended at 32:35, with a lot of winds left… Other flights were not getting very high, so it was looking like the conditions were different from the other practice days… Brett launched, and wasn’t getting high enough either, but then had a collision at around 14 minutes… So he relaunched with more turns, and it was looking like a great flight until he got to the top and started bumping, and had to keep his plane away from a string hanging down from the GB team balloon that the line broke on and had lodged close to the top… He kept it from the string, but then he had to try to steer away with the plane close to the balloon, and the prop tucked in under the wing to end the flight at 19:03… Meanwhile, the juniors had some bad luck also, as Spencer didn’t get an official flight, but Parker put up a nice 26:31…

After taking a break from lunch, the flying order was set to Sanborn, Kagan, and Ray… Brett launched, and the flight looked even better than the first… Nice climb to the top, and circling nicely… Then he started to drift, and needed to steer to the other side of the dome… Nice steer across the floor, but when releasing the line the prop tucked just like the previous flight, and came down around 20 minutes… John was up next, and on the launch the plane was having trouble climbing, and didn’t get as high as it should have… He didn’t have to steer, and ended up with a 33:50 for his second flight… After, he found a broken piece of boron on the rear post, and started repairing it to fix the catewampusness in the launches… Nick got ready, launched, and had a midair before I got to the other side of the floor with his box… No damage, so he rewound and launched again, with a strong climb to the top… After a bit of tense steering to keep out of trouble, he got it positioned nicely and ended up with a 27:16… Meanwhile on the junior side, Spencer had a personal best of 25:59, and Parker had a slightly lower flight of 24:39…

So the first two rounds were not the greatest, but everyone seemed to be getting things sorted out… Everyone decided to either relax or go to dinner and then come back for practice between 8 and 10… (Another long day… but these guys are determined to get things worked out…)

I’ll probably post a pic of the first day results later on… Another night relaxing watching some Olympics before going to bed for as much rest as I can get before tomorrow…