Adverse conditions.  Yes, those two words summed up the season opener for the 2012 WCF Club Pylon Racing.  The Wine Country Flyers host an awesome 8 race Series and they hate to miss a race.  I mean, they will do anything to fly.  Even braving 25mph winds, scattered showers and a high temp in the low 50’s …  there’s just no stopping these guys!

A third word might help sum it up as well, Fun.  Looking back on the race day, it was a lot of fun (as always).  Sure the conditions were tough (people were getting applause just for landing their planes in the severe cross winds!), but there was some great piloting skills shown that day and the racing was awesome.

For 2012, the WCF Club has changed the class line-up somewhat.  There’s T-28 / Corsair, Reno 450, Dogfighter, and EF1.  4 classes to round out the day and the speeds have really come up in the faster classes.  They also added another race course for the two faster classes, now having both long and short two pylon courses.

T-28 / Corsair the rules were left untouched, and it was the biggest class of the day.  If memory serves (not near as well as it used too) there were 3 heats of 4 each.  There were a few new faces, plenty of regulars  and some old ones missing, the class was hotly contested by all who flew.  Mike Kalua attended his first race, flying the JPH #5 T-28 and placed two 2nds and a 1^st.  My guess is Jake McDonald took the overall win, but that’s just a guess.

Reno 450 had a spec prop added to the rules, but the planes still looked fast.  These light little ‘Birds really got tossed around in the gusty conditions, several crashed during the day.  Steve Cole looked strong all day, but I’ve got no idea who took the class win.  I raced this class myself and had a mostly miserable day.  My highlight was racing the 3^rd heat against Bryan Germone and totally dicing it out the whole time.

Dogfighter is a new class, built around the Multiplex Dogfighter airframe, E-Flite 10 motor and any 3s pack.  The airplanes looked very fast, most likely close to 100mph?  They were solid, even in the wind, and the paint schemes that showed up were great.  I think that Jon Stychno was the fast guy for the day, his Silver Bullet looked great.

In the EF1 class, the idea was to go along with a nationaly recognized class and set of rules.  These are balsa and ply built up airframes, running a 25 size electric motor and a 4s pack.  They were by far the fastest planes of the day, getting upwards of 115mph.  Many pilots were looking good, and we’ll have to wait for the official results to find out who the winner was.

So, overall, round one had a great turnout and was a lot of fun.  The conditions were challenging, but equally so for all involved.  There was a lot of great flying throughout the day, as mention just taking off and landing were tough and piloting skills became apparent as the ground got closer.  The WCF Club is off to a great start for 2012.  As always, I highly suggest that people come out to watch, or come out to fly in these events.  Keep an eye on www.wcflyers.com for the official results!

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