Tuesday 1 July 2014

31 June - oops, 1 July!, from the crew dude

Hi all!
As yesterday was written off, the Aussies all went off sight-seeing.  First to Hämeenlinna, as Eric mentioned, to see the castle (Häme Castle) whose history I've now forgotten, but for this sort of thing I just view the Wikipedia Article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Häme_Castle) and leave it at that.  It was built (they think) around 1308 or so.

Nearby is a Military Museum, but we didn't have time to go in there as we had arranged to be at a go-karting track at the time.  Go-karting on a wet track is interesting to say the least as the tyres have next to no grip, and the kart can be controlled only in a straight line, on a track which has none.  But the track dried off during the event, to the extent that lap times improved by around 20%… and that was when the aggression kicked in, especially on those races which used a standing gridded start!  At least several people managed to create major updates to the track layout, by getting knocked into the lightweight track barriers and moving them into positions that they'd probably never been in before, and we got the impression that the operators might have been glad to see the back of us!
Then to a restaurant in Hämeenlinna for pizza, and that was that.

Today's dawned rather gloomy, but the grid's open, so we'll all line up, and then await further developments.  Yesterday's competition forecast for today was for reasonable conditions, but a couple of other forecasts seemed to indicate otherwise, so it'll be interesting to see what ultimately occurs.
Stay tuned, as I'm thinking there will be quite a few updates!

Update 1050 - briefing shortly, Tasks A and B have been set, but the weather's looking very iffy. Will be interesting to see what happens! Meantime, a few days ago someone had a remote-controlled helicopter with video camera and heading and 3D position control and hold, cuddling launching. Pretty impressive! I'm hoping those videos might become available somewhere for download or streaming.

Update 1110 - task A has already been trashed. Task B is AAT of 2 hours, scratch distance 223 km or so. First launch 1230.

Update 1229 - first launch 1330.  And if anything the cloud looks worse!  There's been some light drizzle too.

Update 1311 - day cancelled.  Hardly surprising - the cloud's thickened up even more.

Cheers

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