September 2022 Club 40 race report
Another great Saturday of racing for the pilots at the Galveston Fun Flyers field located in the flat lands of Northern Indiana. Race preparations were well underway upon my arrival and without much delay we were ready to race.
5 Bronze racers and 4 Silver racers made for a decent matrix with some extremely fast times being posted all around. In the first heat, Bronze class pilot David Poland finally wore out his tried and true racer, this plane is a veteran of maybe 50 races all told when he encountered some sort of radio issues. David is a true believer that practice makes you better and I wouldn’t even guess how many flights this plane has on it in total. Things wear out and if I were to guess the radio succumbed to cumulative effect of a lifetime of vibration. Years ago a magazine published a list of things that go bad in airplanes and the number one culprit is the switch, followed by batteries (pre LiFe) and then Receivers. Servos’ rounded up the list. So keep an eye on your gear, I routinely replace my switches on some planes after a few years, other ways to reduce the risk is to run two switches it just depends on your application.
Back to racing….. Ned Gochenour started off with 4 straight heat wins then slipped to a second place and finally a third in the final, sixth race. This opened the door for Tim Porter, last months winner who slipped into the number one slot, starting with two second place finishes then ran the table with 4 straight heat wins to finish the day. This wasn’t apparent at the field until I ran the numbers afterwards and figured this out in my post race audit.
Name Points Fast time
Tim Porter 16 1:43.5*
Ned Gochenour 15 1:43.6
Kit Gerhard 14 1:50.22
Tracy Spencer 9 2:01.2
David Poland 1 DNF
In Silver class racing was equally dramatic, Jake Chapman was new to the class and had some plumbing issues that prevented him from being competitive. He showed promise but only completed 2 races. The other three racers went at it with crazy aggressiveness on the pylon turns trying to minimize the time going in the wrong direction, that netted Matt two zeros when he cut out and then flew an extra lap in one other race. Tim and Clint had a great time and figured out the race course and were turning in some blazing fast races. The record time in Club 40 racing is held by Bob Petrinec, “Old Bob”, lives in Texas and his time is in the 1:19.xx time frame so we are getting faster, very close to his record time.
Clint Seyer 17 1:20.03*
Tim Sparks 12 1:21.6
Matt Fornefeld 8 1:32.32
Jake Chapman 3 2:07.1
So in closing get ready for the last race of the season on October 15th here in Southern Indiana. Be here by 10 AM. David Poland will arrange for the food and we will have another great race!
If you have a switch on your plane that has seen years of regular use spend $10 and get a new switch!
Thanks for the course workers who come out to help I would guess they were well entertained as always and we couldn’t do it without your help. As a reminder I have several gently used airframes for sale if you want to bring someone else into racing, I also have a few bronze class engines as well.
Sparky
PS David says the plane he crashed is repairable so it will be back almost as good as new.