MAAA Wingspan - Quarterly Magazine

10 WING SPAN AUGUST As the premier glider event in Australia, the League of Silent Flight (LSF) Open Thermal Glider Tournament, has for over forty years, successfully brought together RC glider pilots from across the globe to compete internationally. Unsurprisingly, the 2019 event was yet another soaring success, with gliders taking to the skies between 7 – 10 June in Jerilderie, Southern NSW. Modelflight RC’s, Mike O’Reilly has attended all but one of the events in the tournament’s 42-year history, which spans back to the late 1970s. He believes there is a combined set of reasons why it remains such a popular event. “It has a very good central venue, split quite evenly between Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne and we fly inside the Jerilderie Racecourse, which is a very large open area offering excellent conditions for flying RC gliders,” he said. “It’s also had solid support for the entire span of its history and the weather is typically fairly mild for winter. The event just works and it’s the biggest RC soaring event in the southern hemisphere and for the last thirty years has become the premier RC gliding event in the country. The standard of flying is high, it’s very good socially and it’s a great environment for people who are newer to this category of flying to come along and attend.” Mike says gliders at this year’s event experienced typically decent weather conditions, apart from a sour turn on the final day. He acknowledges that the event continues to benefit from strong local council support too. “They really get behind us to ensure things happen to make it easy and efficient to run. They prepare the racecourse for us, along with bringing out portable toilets, rubbish bins and even store a trailer at their depot that the LSF uses to store equipment for running the competition,” he continued. Even the local birdlife appears to get into the positive spirit of things. “If the weather’s reasonable there is a lot of bird activity in the area. They’re really good thermal spotters and they tend to interact in a friendly manner with the gliders,” revealed Mike. Mike also said that in an effort to integrate electric F5J models, the event was run a little differently this year. “There is a trend that’s moving away from launching the gliders by using electric winches. These are flown to Australian open thermal rules and there’s a movement internationally to embrace the electric motor launch category of F5J,” he said. 2019 LEAGUE OF SILENT FLIGHT OPEN THERMAL GLIDER TOURNAMENT CLASSIC CAMARADERIE FOR COMPETITIVE GLIDERS AT THIS LONG-RUNNING EVENT IN SOUTHERN NSW