World Championships in Deblin, Poland 1997
|
Well.. I made it. Got to Poland and back and yes I'm in one piece. (so are the airplanes) If it were not for the strong support of the Canadian team, I would still be trying to figure out how to clear my planes through Polish customs. These special people are... Tony & Sandy Kreg, Paul Svek, Dave and Sue Patrick Mr. Kreg SR., special thanks to Tony's cousin Gregory in Poland, and of course my good friend who called for me Tanya Wolff.
|
All I can say at this point is that I am happy to have had the opportunity to make the trip and represent Canada in this kind of event. Getting there and setting up for the event was half the challenge. Nerves were the other half . |
In a nutshell, this is a brief description of what I was witness to at the worlds in Poland. I'm sure that a lot more happened than met my eyes, but then I guess not everyone was affected as much by the interesting cuisine as I was, not to say that I didn't have a sampling of some good Polish food, but lets just say that our team was rather lucky compared to some other teams who will remain nameless, and who survived on bread and butter alone. Cheryl Marsden.. you weren't kidding were you?! | After a rather long flight, a long and frustrating time with Polish customs, a 2 hr drive to our hotel, about five hours sleep, and a weird retrimming session at the practice field the next day. I was ready to have the planes measured and weighed. |
|
|
|
Here you can see the whole Canadian team in one section of this big hanger, all planes built, measured, weighed and stamped. |
I met a lot of people who knew me from visiting my site here on the internet which surprised me greatly. I was very happy to make their acquaintances and hope to see them all in the future. It amazes me to no end of the possibilities and potential of this media in particular. Many competitor that I spoke with did have negative comment about the judging in particular. I was told that a new system was being tried out. Four panels of judges, 3 judges each panel, and no throwing out of high and low scores. The method of scoring was less than desirable as well. They actually used the wrong scores for our teams calculations.. twice, so what does that tell you about the potential reliability of all other scores. |
 |
|
You have to give 'em points for trying though. Every competitor went on the clock as soon as the former had landed, and even though fog made the schedule 3.5 hours behind for some days, buy way of cutting out lunches and breaks, the flights were put in and fights were flown by all competitors.
|
There were a veriety of new planes at the worlds . Gunther Ulsamer was flying his all fiberglass planes. The wings were a hollow fiberglass construction with a unique aileron. No visible hinge. The wing sheeting actually flexed at the hinge line. Quique Somenzini was flying the "new style" pattern plane called "Desafiasco" with one of the big 2 stroke engines, and apparently his own prop. The plane could be flown extremely slowely. One of the Australians Peter Goldsmith flew a fixed gear pattern plane. He claims that after wind tunnel testing his model and comparing the drag to a plane with retracts, the fixed gear won out. He flew it very well as his score shows. The Italian team had an interesting gismo, a Hattory pipe (copied) via x-ray machine, and made of pure glass. A friend of one of the team members did it for something to do. Beautiful job, a bit cheeper apparently, but a little fragile. Looking around at the various new planes, I noticed that alot of them are darn big and fat. Big fat bodies to slow them down I imagine. I guess that you can do that now that we are getting into 160's and above. |
Return to Dez's Homepage
