Radio Control Soaring - 2011/03

114 MODEL AVIATION
WELCOME TO the Soaring clinic. It’s
nice when the younger generations stop by
to visit with the older fliers; it sort of gives
us hope that there is balance in the world.
Today Cody Remington has dropped in to
share his thoughts with us.
Cody’s Soaring credentials are, to say
the least, impressive. His bio on the US
F3J (FAI Thermal Duration Soaring)
team’s Web site includes them all. In 2005
he made the US F3J Junior team. It went
on to win the Gold Medal in 2006 in
Slovakia, and Cody earned the individual
Gold. That was the first time that a non-
German Junior had won either the team or
the individual title.
Cody has been on every US F3J team
since 2005. He has also won the Southwest
Classic, F3J in the Rockies, the US F3J
Team Selections, and the Rocky Mountain
Soaring Association contest series for the
second time in a row.
LE: Cody, how long have you been flying
RC sailplanes?
CR: I have been flying for 9 years. I’m 21
now.
LE: What drew you to RC sailplanes? What keeps you in it? I’ve
been to Boulder [Colorado], and I know that there are a lot of
things [to do] that are much prettier than molded sailplanes!
CR: I have always wanted to fly. My mom knew she had a
problem before I could walk, when I was climbing up on tables
trying to jump off and fly.
The need to fly is in my family blood. My grandpa, Col. Peter
Remington, was a B-25 bomber pilot in World War II. I guess I
was destined to fly. My first RC opportunity was with a Zagi I got
for Christmas.
What keeps me flying is the competition. What I really like
about F3J is that it allows you to fly at the same time right next to
your competitors. If you have the read, you can put hits on your
competition right in front of your eyes. I always get a huge
adrenalin rush when I see I have taken a shorter tow than my
competition.
LE: I’ve seen you flying in competitions and you seem to be able
to “see” thermals. What’s this sixth sense and how do you get it?
[[email protected]]
Radio Control Soaring Lee Estingoy
Soaring prodigy Cody Remington
Cody Remington (center)—the 2006 F3J Junior World Champion—celebrates on the
podium in Martin, Slovakia. Team USA’s Casey Adamczyk (R) finished third in the
individual event.
Cody spices things up with some slope time, flying a 2-meter
Mueller Espadita at Lake Weldon CA. Cody makes another perfect landing at F3J in the Rockies in 2009.
Practice, practice, practice. This is where many of the “death
matches” occur, at a beautiful park in Boulder CO.
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March 2011 115
This drill is very similar to flying a contest flight and just so
happens to put you around the height of a 1-second F3J tow. This
puts your mind in a contest mind-set and lets you learn the most
from a practice flight.
If I am alone I will find a thermal and climb out. Before I
leave the thermal, I try and predict where the next one will be and
go to that area. If I am wrong, I try to figure out why and then do
it again.
LE: If you were going out to have fun, no practice involved, what
would you fly and why?
CR: That’s a hard choice. I love acrobatics, so I would have to
choose between my Espada R on the slope, my 50cc Yak, or a 3-
D foamie. I am also starting to fly helicopters, which is starting to
look like it will be another addiction for me.
When it comes down to it, I just love flying. If it flies, I am
having fun.
LE: Not sure if you’ve ever seen the movie Citizen Kane, but at the
end when the rich dude is dying, he keeps mumbling “Rosebud.”
Turns out “Rosebud” was the name of his beloved sled when he was
a kid. Do you have a “Rosebud” airplane?
CR: Yes! My Espada RL is my baby. I can’t seem to let that one go.
What I really like
about the Espada RL
is that it really lets
Unsure that the explanation for this
picture makes sense, Cody can fly
anything, anytime.
F3J competitors generally have two lines
set up for redundancy. The launcher needs
to communicate the choice of line to the
tow team; hand signals are effective.
Waving a big, orange sailplane around
helps too.
CR: I wouldn’t really call it a sixth sense, and I still feel like I
have a long ways to go in the air-reading category. It always
bothers me when I am wrong about a read, and I am always trying
to figure out what I did wrong and learn from what worked.
You quickly start to see that the world works in patterns, and
once you figure out that pattern, you can predict it. I am still
learning a lot about this.
A lot of what I have learned comes from working with the
world’s top pilots like Skip Miller, Daryl Perkins, and Joe Wurts.
Working with them has allowed me to see what they are seeing
and compare my ideas with theirs. I attribute a lot of my success
to working with those great pilots.
LE: What sort of practice regimen do you use prior to a contest?
CR: In preparation for the last Worlds I flew almost every day.
For F3J, landing is very important. There is no reason to take a
short tow if you can’t maximize the last second of the flight time.
I spent about 75% of my time shooting 1-minute landing drills,
which usually worked out to a minimum of 25 landings a day and
a lot of times more.
The next part of my training is what we call a “death match.”
Skip Miller came up with the drill for us.
What we do is have groups of two to four people launching at
the same time. We use short hi-starts and play last man down. If it
looks like we are going to get out, we shoot a landing and do it
again.
03sig4.QXD_00MSTRPG.QXD 1/25/11 8:03 AM Page 115
you see when you are doing something
right and when you are doing something
wrong. When you fly that airplane right, it
really works.
Plus it feels sweet. Most other models
are like flying a leaf through the air, while
the Espada locks in.
LE: What is your favorite airplane to take
to the field these days for fun? For Thermal
Duration competition? For F3J? Maybe
explain why for each.
CR: My favorite all-around plane is the
Espada R. It really lets me do everything
from in-your-face acro sloping to Thermal
Duration. For competition it is without a
doubt the Espada RL. The RL is really the
first all-around F3J design; it was really the
first out there that only needed one layup.
LE: You’ve won a few contests here and
there. Which ones mean the most to you
and why?
CR: Winning the F3J Junior World
Championship was the most important
contest for me. I was an underdog trying
out for the F3J team, and in fact almost did
not make the team.
This rode along with me, and I don’t
think there was much expected of me at the
Worlds. It was great to overcome that and
win the Worlds.
It also felt great as I was representing
the US. It was the first time any country
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had beaten the German Juniors either in
the team or individual awards in the
history of F3J, and we took it both.
LE: You’ve worked with airframe
designers and builders in the past. Are
you working with anyone now?
CR: I work with a model retailer, so my
workday involves me working with a wide
range of designers and builders. I would
say the ones I currently work closest with
are Jaro Muller and MVM models.
Jaro is a good friend of mine. We first
met during the 2006 worlds. I worked with
him, giving him feedback on what the
model was doing and what I thought of it.
I also worked with him on some special
light models.
The manufacturer that I have done the
most with is MVM. MVM is a
manufacturer located in Bulgaria and they
produce the Vulture. We brought it into
the country to test out a new price-point
model, and we learned how good it
actually is. It’s a user-friendly design
that’s a competitive F3J model.
I knew the model would need some
work with the layup and spar. I worked
with them very closely to change the
layup. We were able to take a lot of
weight out while not reducing the
strength. I also redesigned the spar,
making it two times stronger and up to
F3J standards.
LE: Crystal ball question: where do you
see RC Soaring headed over the next 10
years? Is this good or bad, and what can
we do to help steer things in the right
direction?
CR: As competition goes I would like to
think that it is on the rise. F3J in the
Desert registration was recently opened
and was filled up in less than a day.
I hear talk of people wanting to host
more FAI events, and that F3B is growing.
I feel that the US will need to get away
from Thermal Duration and start flying
the more challenging FAI events. If you
look at any contest out there, be it
NASCAR, football, etc., they all are very
exciting events, and that makes people
want to get better at them and makes the
competition better.
If you look at Thermal Duration, they
are usually flying non-man-on-man
events, trying to get 5 minutes. I just don’t
think the excitement level is there like in
flyoffs of F3J or a distance task in F3B. I
think there would be a lot of growth if
there were more FAI events.
How can we help? Stop complaining
and start promoting FAI events.
As far as the future of F3J goes, I have
heard a lot of complaining that F3J only
comes down to the last second, and that it
is only a landing contest. Many point to
contests like the 2010 F3J Worlds.
If you look at what actually happened
at the contest, you will see that in one
flight in the flyoffs there was only one
person who made their time. In the
preliminaries, Daryl Perkins was the only
person that didn’t drop airtime. Everyone
else had a minimum of one and a lot of
them had two airtime drops.
So how do we fix the problem of one
second deciding a whole contest? There
are a few options. You can either carry
though the prelim scores, fly more flyoff
rounds, or drop the throw-outs. MA
Sources:
League of Silent Flight
www.silentflight.org
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