Electric Thermal

Position	Pilot	Flyoff Score	Total Score	Model	Battery
1	Norman Childs	1000	2000	Dog 'E' 2	1700-7
2	Norman Elliot	943	1661	Topaz	1250-7
3	Chris Moynihan	876	1655	Ellipsoid	2000-7
4	Clive Learwood	758	1600	Silent Dream	2000-7
5	Ken Glynn		1217	O/D	800-10
6	Graham Stallard		1000	Selection	2000-7
7	John Price		787	O/D	500-6
8	Ian Lancaster		741	Blues & Twinstar	500-7 & 2000-7
9	Brian Sacree		658	Titan	1250-7
10	Terry Antell		341	Early Bird	2000-7

This competition is based on a set of rules devised by Norman Childs, the effect of which is to reward the most efficient use of the energy extracted from the battery.
The rules are given in detail in LIFT 32 published in March this year.
In essence the time flown is factored depending on the battery size, this means that a flyer using a 7 cell 2000 pack will need fly for 4 times as long than a flyer using a 7 cell 500 pack.
On the day only two aircraft sported 500 sized cells although one of them, John Price's own design lightweight, had only 6 of them. Four pilots used 2000 packs, two 1250s, a 1700 and unusually a 10 cell 800 pack was used by Ken Glynn in his O/D model. Four slots with a maximum time of 60 minutes were flown. To reduce the chance of pilots getting away in monster lift for long periods a 10-second low pass was required every 10 minutes. Each slot had 5 pilots competing with the winner of each slot receiving 1000 points and the other scores percentaged. A fly-off of the four top scores was flown to decide the winner.

In slot 1 Norman Childs flew out all but 2m 20s of the slot flying his O/D DOG 'E' 2 with 7 1700 cells and comfortably won the slot in conditions where lift was hard to find and sink quite easy. John Price flew for 13m 10s with his tiny battery pack and came in second. Chris Moynihan flew his Ellipsoid with a 2000 pack for 43m 24s to win slot 2 from Clive Learwood who managed 38m 46s with his Silent Dream.
The bottom scoring pilots from slots 1 and 2 flew in slot 3 and the top scorers in slot 4, at least as far as frequency clashes would allow.
Norman Elliot(Topaz) won slot 3 from Ian Lancaster flying a TwinStar! whose twin 400 motors appeared to be quite efficient. Perhaps a twin powered thermal design is in order. Slot 4 was won by Norman C to give him 2000 points and Clive Learwood was second with 28m 13s. Norman flew for only 34 minutes in this slot but conditions were poor.

So, into the fly-off with Norman Childs (pictured above with winning model) 2000 points Norman Elliot 1661 Chris Moynihan 1655 Clive Learwood 1600 Chris flew the longest at 41m 22s but Norman C. flew for only 1m 14s less with his 1700 pack to gain victory over all. Norman E. flew for 27m 58s but his 1250 battery pack gave him second place, beating Chris into third and Clive, with 35m 58s but a 2000 pack, into fourth.
Norman had done his homework and had built the right machine for this competition; it's light, climbs well and soars well. Do we change the rules or will we have to build a new sort of model? It seems to me that this competition shows how efficient electric thermal soarers are. I suspect that without the mandatory low pass every 10 minutes many pilots could have flown for several hours. However, thermal soaring skills are still needed to find and to stay in lift and the motor is only needed to deal with adverse conditions and to wait for the lift to come through again.
An enjoyable and interesting competition, even though I was the CD.