Rudolf Drnec Memorial 2008 - September 14th, 2008, Brno-Medlánky

Rudolf Drnec Memorial is considered as closing event of the season, and this time the weather was not very friendly, as usual. The autumn is coming and maybe the nice weather quota was for this year already used in Openscale 2008. Memorial Sunday welcomed the participants with temperatures below 10 degrees, slowly and unwillingly rising just below 15 degrees in midday. The wind, old enemy of small models, was oscillating between 2-6 m/s, but those who were lucky could find moments of relative calm with thermic. However, those moments were rare, and models were fighting the turbulence caused by humps the wind had to go over.

There is only one winner in the competition, but we consider the winner to be everyone who fought the wind. There were several accidents, so e.g. Adam Jenik broke the nose of his Focke-Wulf Ta-152H, as model quickly gained nice height but was slammed down due to strong wind blast. So Adam had to park the model in car trunk before the midday. Wing amputation occurred in nice model of Miles Magister by Martin Huk. One can not believe that it is his first M-min (1/20 scale) model. Martin with smile on his face repaired the model and showed great flights which resulted in position in top 10. Wing separation from the fuselage also happened to Michal Křepelka with his Šmolík Š-39. The best friend of modeler (CA glue) helped again and model was still in the competition, showing the great flights, unfortunately the best and longest one was not measured. BTW, this model is at the moment the only plan available on Minimakety.cz server (if you could not find it, take a look here), thanx to Radek Gregovsky, who gave us his plan for publishing. Robert Pajas also returned from the field with fuselage in one hand and wing in the other, but experienced know that his Beta Major has removable wings so you would look for CA in Robert’s hands to no end. But that is not all, wings were broken in Fairchaild by Standa Cerny and his second model, high ceiling MiG I-222 was very lucky when slamming into the ground right after take off. This luck avoided model of PAC 750XL by Tomáš Heinl and both biplanes by Jirka Merta: Aero C-104 a Bucker 131 – all the models are waiting for reparation at home.

The director of the competition requested the modellers to move in about middle of the competition, as the wind was taking models into takeoff/landing strip of aeroclub airfield, where Zlin tow aeroplane was taking gliders up every half hour. New location exposed models to rougher surface and model owners to more difficult travel – models ended up the hill.

The victory did not fly away from Ing. Koutný, in spite the fact that he left his top Mig DIS at home and used his Arsenal VG-36. His second model, new Spitfire Mk VII, showed a bit weird flights. Robert Pajas, saying “Beta does not fly at all today” showed flights just below model maximum and having a few seconds more, maybe the winner would regret his Mig DIS decision. Another member of Ke-PNUT Team, Adam Jeník with his Fairchild was backing Robert from the third place.

In junior category the number of competitors allowed them all to be on the victory rostrum. The first position got A.Stehlík with Komet, followed by A.Křižka and Jiří Sekera.

Winners announcement and prizes awarding took place in “Bend propeller” bar, where everyone escaped the bad weather. Hot sausages, potato soup and other goodies delivered energy so the modellers could join the large meeting discussing how to continue in M-min category, what rules changes are possible, etc. The result? Openscale 2009 will be more “open”, but we will get to this later....

It is nice custom to thank everyone who participated on competition organization and today is no exception. So the thanks go to the competition main organizer Tomáš Heinl, competition director Jan Děkaník, static points awarding committee (Děkaník, Merta, Čerešňák) and timekeepers (Děkaník, Čerešňák, Felda). Lets also thank to guys who do not have Medlánky behind the door and had to travel from Praha, Ostrava, Zlín or Zábřeh.

2008 year can be in M-min category considered closed.

text: ISim, Ruja, Felda
photo: ISim, Ruja, Robert, Felda

P.S. More pics from Robert can be found at Rajče (external link).

Results in PDF format (45kB)