San Diego Cup

[Brewbud]

Is anybody going down the San Diego Cup this weekend? Is it all gas or are there FE heats as well?

I have not been to a race in 25+ years so I am looking forward to checking it out. Would be nice if there was some FE though.

Sorry if this is wrong section...

Cheers,
Tab

[Brewbud]

I went down to the San Diego Model Yacht Pond on Saturday for the race. It was interesting and fun to watch, but they did not have any FE heats.

One thing that detracted from the races a bit was that boats in the heat were often stretched out at the start due to the difficulty of judging mill time just right. It seemed to make the make the competitive edge a little less thrilling (at least for spectators ). I can understand how much harder it would be for gas boaters to time that start just right. There were even quite a few that did not start the race because they stalled while throttling down to avoid jumping the start.

It did get me curious about FE racing. Is it similar or are the starts a little easier to time in FE heats? Seems the latter would be the case. Are Le Mans starts common? I saw in the rule books it is an option for FE heats.

Regardless, it was fun to watch. Now I really need to check out some FE races.

Here are a couple pics from some of the tighter (too tight) action.

Coming out of turn 4 prewreck sm.jpg

and a few seconds later wreck sm.jpg

[Fluid]

My club used LeMans starts 20 years ago, but today they are almost never heard of. It can be a challenge to get some hydros on plane and the shore start makes it more difficult. I often won heats with a LeMans start by choosing hulls which were easy to plane off. That could give me a 50-100 foot lead over a cranky hull, enough to stay ahead.

Most clubs today use a half or full mill like the gas guys. I am surprised that so many gas racers were having difficulty with the mill, most around here nail it pretty well. All it takes is practice, although it is easier for an FE. When I race in Open heats with gas cats my FE cat has the advantage most of the time.


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[namba688]

The main reason you didn't see any electric boats at the San Diego race is because it is salt water which does it mix well with electric boats. They race FE's at Legg Lake up in S El Monte.

[Brewbud]

Yeah I don't care for the salt water either. But it is the closest pond to me. There are a LOT of FE boats that run on that pond. Maybe the race boats cost more so they don't want to risk it there.

[SD Eracer]

There is a large FE group that runs that pond almost religiously during the weekends, I'm a part of that group. I don't know why there isn't an official FE race there, but it could be because FE boats haven't been popular in San Diego until recently. San Diego doesn't have a large amount of lakes, so RC boating is rare here. The gas organization has been around for a long time however.

Normally Saturday morning is for scale boaters, then afternoon are sailboats only. On Sunday, its the power boats. It used to be the gas guys owned Sundays, but they rarely show up now. Its probably because just a year ago, the average FE boats were 45mph RTR boats. Now its mostly 60mph to 90mph FE boats, and may have driven some of the gas guys out.

If you show up on Sunday, especially after 12pm, on the right side of the pond, you will have FE boaters there for sure, unless its a special two day Sailboat regatta.

Running in saltwater isn't really an issue unless you flood the hull and soak the batteries, which will eventually cause them to stop functioning. Most motors and ESC are unaffected by seawater, especially if you rinse them out fully and use Corrosion-X to protect them. Even my receivers if sprayed with Corrosion-X can survive being fully submerged in seawater.

Yeah I don't care for the salt water either. But it is the closest pond to me.....

Have you tried Santee lakes? It feels good to run in freshwater from time to time, especially since I'm not always having to rinse off the boat after every run. They have one lake there designated for RC use, we go there when the model yacht pond has an event on Sundays that we can't run.

There are a few negatives of that lake, such as an open section that makes boat recovery more difficult, valley heat, and a huge bolder that have sitting out there just begging to be hit :)