RE: TOLEDO SHOW and ETOC 2012
The event ETOC has been as always a real bar-raiser. Most of the top flyers were using VPP with thrust vectoring. I spoke to RJ and imitation is the purest form of flattery- with regard to his signature inverted flat backwards spin. Now imagine the plane doing a flat spin except its moving backwards rather than forwards. Sorry you have to see it on video to understand. The problem is when your competitors refine the maneuver. Gernot did both an inverted and uprigth flat backwards spin.
Joseph has invented a few very unique maneuvers but did not use them in the competition. Joseph is flying Gernot's winning airplane from last year. It has thrust vectoring (right and left) but not VPP. He started flying this plane on Monday and I'll tell you what he has a fast learning curve I was astonished at how well he flew. He also borrowed Mike Hubbard's backup F3P plane and flew that in the competition with one flight to trim/get used to the setup like an hour before the contest started last night. That one really astonished me.
Christophe (from Germany) and Gernot's planes were the smoothest and slowest. Gernot used a contra-rotating propellor which had the most constant flying speed of any F3P plane I have ever seen. Christophe (from Germany) got a similar (but not quite as slow constant speed as Gernot's) through feather light weight.
Some more updates and blogging shortly.
Don