Tag Archives: datchet radio sailing

Next Generation Remote Control Race Marks in Test !! (Plus Race Report 16/17 Nov !)

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Great Weekend Racing – we had the Next Generation of Radio Control Race Marks in for testing. Pretty good they were too. On the previous generation you would get a bit of movement – GPS accuracy can be anything from 1-4 metres depending on thickness of cloud cover (apparently well known to pilots and drone fans!). Anyway the kit seems to have improved noticeably and the accuracy seems more like half a metre or less with the new marks. Eat your heart out Americas Cup!!

At the morning coffee break, Craig gave us a great tutorial on 3D boat printing (really interesting to see close up) and the tweaks on his new printed IOM design.

Results from the weekend at Datchet:-


Four of the regular Ten Skippers were out on Saturday with a light breeze and thanks to Phil’s marks we were able to set a good course on the north bank. We managed eight races and were the only boats on the water.


Results were 
Hugh 8 points
Phil. 11 points
Graham 15 points
Richard 16 points

Sunday saw the marks in use again in a bit more breeze and Craig sailing his new IOM managed 11wins from 11races.


Overall 
Craig 9 points
Darin 20 points 
David Adam 30 points
Phil 33 points

It was good to see Richard Jones on the water after a long lay off. He was not scored in his 5 races and neither was I with 7 races


Good day with sunshine, even if it was a bit in the eyes with a low sun.  Phil had his new Blitz 6 from Red Ant

HM

Racing Sunday November 3rd

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Five of us at the Club House, and four of us raced. Light A-Rig conditions but a huge reminder that you don’t need a large fleet to get fantastic racing. It was always very close and honestly a couple of races were proper corkers!

(Phil racing Craig’s Vanilla Design)

We got ten races in. David was our “Mr Consistent” of the day with a bunch of second places in the breakfast session and a few firsts in the following session. But honestly, everybody had a go at the front !

(Hugh’s Venti looking good)

Launching wasn’t as bad as I expected – I’m a bit unsteady on various gritty or slopey surfaces, so I was duty RO on the hard beach. However, having taken time to explore and experiment I can see that for the north course, it can be viable (for me anyway!) to walk the long route to the hard beach, then follow the water line along to the main club pontoons. The shore end of the jetties are a couple of metres up the slope. We were on the north course, so is an ok medium walk from the pontoons to the race area – keeps your steps up!!

Results as soon as HM publishes….

IOM Worlds – Just Watched the Final Day !!

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Have just watched the final day from the Gladstone Worlds. Brilliantly exciting viewing and the organisation and presentation was simply awesome.

A huge well done to Datchet Members – Nigel, David and Sean. Really terrific and enjoyed watching you all compete. Thank you.

To the guys at the top – what a close finish!! So exciting to watch ! One point !!

For the Bar Chat ….adding fuel to the fire:-

I was intrigued at the number of each design that was entered in the regatta. The VickersRC boats seem hugely popular in Australia and New Zealand and rightly so. The Britpop of ANZ perhaps! Along with the Venti the Vickers boats had around 20 qualifiers a piece. From the Northern Hemisphere, the very new VISS design had 7 entries. Simply fewer VISS’s there as it’s a pretty new product, from a land far away.

The designs all look to perform about the same to me. Do they to you`? Do you suppose designers have converged on the optimum shape by now? Let’s face it, just like at any Club the thing that counts most is “who is driving”, and there were some amazing sailors at Gladstone.

When you were watching boat on boat situations, did you visually get an impression of what the quick designs were? The camerawork tended to follow Ian Vickers a lot with his V12, and my gosh his boat looked quick to me. Fabulous.

But Formula One has a Constructors Championship which often leads to interesting differences when viewed alongside the Drivers Championship. I wondered if there was a way to compare design success alongside skipper success.

So I tried looking at the performance of the top four boats of each design… and then the top five boats. This is what I found !!

Next time we are in the clubhouse queueing for coffees, we can talk about this !!