Pavel Pinkas' ECOF-2002 Report

ECOF from my perspective

I'm supposed to be in my garage now, sanding blades, but I can take a short rest, I guess. I have to say big THANK YOU to everybody who let me occupy (in the worst possible meaning of that word) pad #1 for long periods of time, just to get my R&D flights in the air.

Even bigger THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU goes to all people who helped me with this project. I was truly impressed with the performance of our youngsters. Zak and Ryan were running west tracking station and they did wonderful job. They were a perfect match for Dan Wolf who worked without a flaw at east station. Of all 17 flights, we had one track lost and this was because of my error in using the walkie (PTT button is not just a decoration).

I was equally impressed with the performance of Samantha, Trevor and Mary who recovered many of my flights. Even on wimpy B-motors, competition helos are thermal riders and Bong vegetation, increasing winds and snapping turtles add a lot of difficulty to this already extreme sport.

And big thanks to Dave, Mark, Fran, Mike and everybody else who I forgot to mention. Just FYI, the altitude data are making sense and I think this could be a good and useful R&D report.

Feels SO good to be doing experimental research once again.

Back to the garage!

Pavel