I joined the SCSA Spring Open contest in Sanshui last Sunday together with Allan. We arrived at Sanshui Garden hotel on Friday night by taking the shuttle bus from Wai Chai. It took about 4 hours of travel time including border custom. Then, we got up earlier on Saturday and had a whole day practice in a DLG field which is somewhere on the east bank of 北江 river. It is a large patch of grassland big enough for holding DLG or even F3B competitions. The weather was fine and warm, although it was a bit foggy, there were plenty of thermal to be explored. Most foreign pilots had also arrived one day earlier to do practice. There were pilots from Czech, Germany, Taiwan and also from Beijing. They came with many state-of-the-art DLG models; Snipe, XX-Lite, Concept, Brko, Blaster 3, Stoebel, etc. These models can easily achieve a launch height of 50m or above. I did a lot of practice launches and fine-tuned my model setting to the best launch and cruise condition. Unfortunately, in the afternoon, I had a midair with Roland’s model. It was my fault because I didn’t see his model coming behind me when I launched. His Concept’s fuse was broken after midair and the wing was damaged after it fell to ground. My model had a big hole on the left wing panel and needed to be fixed at night in hotel. After a whole day practice, we joined the local pilots to have a delicious dinner on a floating restaurant in the river.
We departed the hotel earlier Sunday morning and arrived at the flying field at about 8:30am. After a bit of practice and pilot briefing, the contest was officially started at 9:30am. A total of 9 rounds of various tasks were flown. The temperature was much cooler than a day before, the humidity was high with no sunshine and strong wind. It was very challenging condition and the contest was really a tough one. The contest was drawn to a close at about 5:30pm and the winners were announced immediately afterward. The champion from the expert class is Roland Sommer Jr from Germany, congratulation! Here are some photos taken in this wonderful trip.