CAOCC2006
From AusF3C
CAOCC 2006
1st Combined Asian-Oceanic Radio Controlled Helicopters (F3C) Aeromodelling Championships, Japan 2006
September 4 - September 9, 2006.
[Ojima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojima%2C_Gunma)], [Ota City (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota,_Gunma)], Japan.
We had a get together in Wagga on 23 - 25 April.
Team
Brendan Tucker, Pilot
George Atkinson, Pilot, Team Manager
Andrew Donaldson, Pilot
Links
Discussion on runryder (http://www.runryder.com/helicopter/t221694p1/)
Official Page (http://www.rc-tech.co.jp/2006CAOCC_index.html)
18 September 2006
Back home again, models appear to have survived the trip well
and I've re-assembled mine. Need to talk with Mick about
the variations on the cobra roll and stall turns so we're
all sure what versions we do here, and possibly try and
get a single international interpretation.
Andrew.
12 September 2006 In Tokyo station about to catch a Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Hiroshima. On the final competition day we rushed taking photographs from the field then went to the awards ceremony and dinner. We have not been at an internet cafe since.
Practice with the Japanese Kyosho guys was great fun, they are a fun group.
Final results that I remember are: 1 Hashimoto, 2 Dobashi, 3 Sensui, 4 Alvin (Philipines), 5 Mark (Philipines), 6 Andrew, 15 George, 16 Brendan.
Met lots of great people, definately the whos-who of helicopters in Japan.
Models are shipped back to Narita airport while we wander about the country to look at things.
I am told there is info at [www.f3c.jp]
Andrew.
08 September 2006
George and I (Brendan) ventured out to the flying field with some officials to recover my lost model. Some of the officials had marked lines to where the model went down. We went back in to the swamp area armed with a long flag and two way radio. With the radio contact the officials were able to triangulate our position to the downed model. To their credit, they put us within the 5 metres of the model. It was laying in a swamp area, with the top of the canopy just sticking out the the water. Two days before, we walked just 2 metres passed the model.
There it is!
Yep, That's mine.
The hole which the model left from impact.
Where I am standing is on the track we made on Wednesday. The pole is showing the position of the crash site.
Hirobo staff assessing whats left of the 3 month old Eagle.
Officials which helped with Eagle recovery mission.
Andrew is currently out at a practice field with the Kyosho pilots practicing for schedule B. I'm sure he is over the moon.
07 September 2006
Got to the field and we all banged out flights that went pretty much without a hitch. Brendan's backup machine was performing well and helped him complete two decent rounds.
George and Brendan will spend tomorrow searching for the missing Eagle in the jungle. Andrew is off on a secret mission before the flyoffs on Saturday.
George has the honour of perfoming the judges' calibration flight on Saturday. He's really looking forward to it!
06 September 2006
No update yesterday - we had the Wednesday from hell. Many people, including
Horace dropped by and said "Gee the Australian team has bad luck today".
Here's how yesterday went...
The first guy up, from China, auto'd into the scrub on the other side of the runway. He seemed to get his model back. Brendan was up 3rd, all went well until the flipping pull back, which suffered a technical fault and ended up with the model ditching about 200m out and in the jungle. We planned to get out there later and retrieve it. George flew, did good. Andrew flew, landed after the 1st hovering maneuvre, then had the model blow up while sitting on the ground, due to a servo horn coming loose.
The response from Kyosho was most impressive, they had assessed the damage and had each replpacement part sitting on the table within a couple of minutes, and a man sitting there cleaning each part I removed. Most impressive! The model was soon back together, just needing a test fly.
During a break in our team's flying, we headed off into the jungle. This has given me a new perspective on the badness that the guys on the Kokoda trail must have been through. Jungle is bad, went, smelly, hot and bad. We didn't find the model either.
Did I mention it's 30 degrees and humid? We also spent all of yesterday competing in drizzle. The official word is that no pilot would be forced to fly in the rain. You can interpret that :)
After returning from the Jungle George and I (Andrew) flew. Brendan
agnoised over this and decided not to fly his backup model due to
concerns that it might also fail.
We returned wet and tired to clean up, eat and then visit the coin laundry down the road.
05 September 2006 Back at the internet cafe, our connection to the world. Today we got through our Model Check-in and official practice flight. We looked at each other to wonder what was going on when George's Eagle 3 WC weighed in at just over 3.2kg, they are normally just over 5.0kg. After they readjusted the scales all was well.
We all got through our practice flights ok, with George shooing away the Chinese
pilot who was in the ready box, to give his other machine a fly. As a result he
stole 2 mins of the Chinese team's time.
We sat around for the rest of the day while each team had their turn until the Japanese team rocked on up to the field for their turn. It was like everyone waiting for their favourite football player to come on to the field. You could have ran pants-down, down the drive way and nobody would have known. Sensui was up first and did his hovering which was top notch considering the wind was blowing like a Melbourne competition. He started his aeros with his typical launch to the moon. Aeros were really good. Dobashi was up next and his machine looked very impressive. The hovering and aeros were really good too. Hashimoto flew last and did really well in the conditions.
Lunch is consisting of pringles, which have Kanji printed on them here! Breakfast and dinner are
provided at the hotels.
Funny points so far:
-Andrew driving down a lane and across a footpath to take a short cut.
-The hotel manager losing our fuel which was sent a week ago. Many thanks to the guys at Kyosho and Mr Matsuda for getting on the phone on a Saturday night to sort this out.
Brendan and Andrew
Oh, and it turns out that the grommet from a TT header tank is exactly the same as found on a Funtech Caliber 90 frame and tank set. Perhaps someone else will need to know that one day!
Andrew.
04 September 2006 We're sitting in an internet cafe in Ota city in Japan,
we've had two days of practice at the field. The flight line faces south,
so we're looking into the sun a fair bit. Practice has gone well.
There is one flight line with an imaculately laid out square. It's hot
too, 30 degrees and reasonably humid.
There is only one field for F3C (the plankers are flying at a golf course somewhere) and no practice field. In fact, the plankers had to practice with us at our field yesterday! Practice finished at 3:00PM today so they could prepare the field, this was amazing to watch. A man turned up to lay out what looks like hundreds of flowers in pots, a big green carpet turned up for the square and some engineer looking guys started digging up the ashphalt with the start box and lines so they could repaint them further out. This is unlike any other field organisation I've seen. The level of organisation is most impressive, things happen and they happen like clockwork.
There is good support from the manufacturers, with Kyosho, Hirobo and Futaba having said hello so far.
Tomorrow we have model check in, then official practice. We're the first country up for both of those, since we come first alphabetically.
I took a nice photo of the designers of the Kyosho Caliber sitting at our table behind my model. That'll be a favorite.
The food here is excellent. We have breakfast and dinner at our hotel, and we're more than satisfied with it.
Below is the only photo we found on George's phone. Next time we'll come prepared!
Here is another one added on Tuesday
Andrew.
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