MAAA Wingspan - Quarterly Magazine

18 GLIDING FORM SOUTHERN SOARING LEAGUE MEMBER, ANDREWMEYER TALKS TO US ABOUT THE UNIQUE APPEAL OF FLYING RC GLIDERS At just 38-years-old, Andrew Meyer is one of Southern Soaring League’s (SSL) youngest long-term gliding members. Like many other pilots, his fascination for flight began during adolescence and continued to evolve from there. “I’ve always flown model aeroplanes. I started off with rubber band models that my parents bought me for Christmas and the planes just continued to get more complicated as the ability to buy themmyself improved,” he says. Andrew got into RC gliders over a decade ago, with his gliding time split between two continents. “I was living in the US and did a bit of gliding there but I didn’t really have time to get into competitions. However, since I returned to Adelaide six years ago and re-joined the SSL, I’ve had the opportunity to compete at events,” he continues. Andrew flies three classes of gliders: F3J, F3K and the new and emerging F5J. He explains the different charac- teristics of each class. “F3J is a thermal soaring class with a ten-minute flight in a ten-minute window, therefore you have to try and launch as quickly as you can to get as close as possible to the ten-minute flight. It’s about precision landing, where you have to land within ten centimetres of the landing spot. “F3K is for discus-launch gliders, these have a much smaller (1.5 metre) wingspan and weigh between 190- 230 grams. We launch them by holding onto a peg in the wingtip and throwing them like a discus. With practice, pilots can throw up to between 60-70 me- tres. Once they launch, there are a number of tasks that can be flown. “For example, they have a task called ‘poker’ where you’ve got a ten-minute window to get in as much flight time as you can. Before you launch, you have to elect a flight time and then have to achieve it to record a time. However, the risk is if you don’t make your allocated time, you have to keep trying until you do. You can call ‘all-in’ (9:58) and if you land before the end of the win- dow, you get zero points for that round,” says Andrew. “The other class that I fly is F5J, which is a thermal soar- ing class but it’s with an electric motor in the model for launch. I guess there’s a big swing of people [switching] from F3J to F5J. With F5J, you have an altimeter attached which has a 30-second motor on it at the beginning, so you can elect what height you want to launch. However, the higher you launch the more penalty you get. There- fore, the aim of the game is to minimise your launch height and make your flight time.” Andrew says that there is a one-metre precision landing with F5J, therefore getting a low launch height is critical during competitions. “It’s an interesting event, which is evolving quickly with the launch of a lot of new models. I’m looking forward to competing at the very first F5J world championships, held in Slovakia this month.” Andrew went to the Romania F3J event last year and de- spite not soaring to the heights he would’ve liked, found it a character-building experience.