Going Postal
A short primer on a venerable institution for which the time may have come (yet again).
Those of you who are regular readers of RCSD will have seen my letter to the Editor in the October issue (see Resources, below). Publishing that was Terence’s idea, I just wrote in response to his question in the preceding issue, which wondered if anyone remembered postal competitions. Terence asked if I would contribute an article on postal competitions as a follow up to that letter and I agreed, so here it is. If you’ve read my letter (also in Resources) it laid out the basics of what we do here in New Zealand and I expect it’s not significantly different to what many of you experienced in days gone by — that’s assuming that this style of competition is not still operating wherever you happen to be. I suspect postal competitions are not that rare in some parts of the world, although from Michael Berends recent article about his efforts to get people started in a soaring competition, that is not the case everywhere.
I suspect most will have an understanding of the way a postal competition works, but for the uninitiated this is an event where competitors from various locations can make timed flights and post their results to an organiser. All the posted results are then compared to find a winner. The type of event, the rules and the day (or days) that it may be flown are designated beforehand so that everyone theoretically starts on an equal footing. Of course there is no level playing field if the competitors are spread over a wide area as weather conditions are likely to be very different from place to place, but this must be accepted as an integral part of a postal competition.
In New Zealand we have a nationwide postal competition which has been operating continuously since 1966. This is the National Decentralised Competion (NDC) which is administered by Model Flying New Zealand, the governing body for aero-modelling in this country. At the beginning of the year they put out a schedule of monthly events in several categories: Soaring, Vintage, Free Flight and Control Line, with each category featuring several different events each month. In earlier times each event had to be flown on a particular day but this has been changed to a monthly basis, with the proviso that flights must take place only on weekend days or national holidays. This has levelled the playing field to a degree, as you now have more opportunity to avoid bad weather, although once you start a contest you must complete it on the same day so changing conditions can still make or break your day.
So for us as soaring pilots, in November this year we can choose to enter each of the following: F3K, ALES 200 or Thermal H, which is a winch launched 2m glider class. The soaring classes conform to our National Rules (which are based on FAI rules) with some simplifications — for instance in F3K we fly four of the recognised 10 minute tasks and use only the raw scores because there is no way to equalise them as would be done in a conventional contest. There are a few rules governing the way things are run but they have been kept as simple as possible to encourage participation. If you are interested in looking over the rules they can be found in the NDC Information and Results link in the Resources section at the end of this article.
We could of course organise our own club events, but having a schedule for the year provided like this makes it easy and we feel like we are part of the wider community of modellers which adds something extra.
The event calendar for 2021 can also be found from that latter link, immediately above. In soaring we generally have about three events each month with most requiring three or four timed flights, so not a hectic schedule unless all events are flown on one day. Some clubs fit NDC into their monthly calendar while others will look at the weather forecasts and pick their days. In my club the organiser will decide the coming Saturday looks okay and we will fly ALES 200, so the guys all turn up, probably fly a couple of trimming checks then, when someone is ready to go he’ll ask another pilot to time for him and try for that elusive 10 minute time. Although there are often three or four models in the air at once we don’t mass launch, it’s just fly when you are ready, which makes for an unhurried, low stress competition — an ideal situation for us senior citizens.
For an individual, postal competitions provide an easy route into competition without the need to travel. You learn about the different class rules and national safety standards, you can compare notes with others on flying techniques and you will find that your flying improves (you’ll stop landing at the other end of the field!) and your ability to set up your models and understand the capabilities of your R/C equipment will take a quantum leap. You will undoubtedly start to look enviously at some of the more exotic models that others fly, but having said that, most of the electric soaring competitions can be flown with nothing more complicated than a Radian with an ALES switch. That means competing is affordable and it’s surprising how competitive a simple foam model can be.
For additional information I refer you to the Resources section immediately below and in particular the Success in NDC article which I wrote for Model Flying World, the MFNZ magazine a couple of years ago (pre-COVID). It gives some idea of how one club approached the problem of getting competition started.
Best of luck with setting up your own postal competitions. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below in the Responses section and I will do my best to answer them.
©2021 Rex Ashwell
Resources
- Letters to the Editor from the October, 2021 issue of RCSD where I also discuss postal competitions.
- RC Soaring Diaries from the September, 2021 issue of RCSD where Michael Berends laments the lack of interesting in competition flying.
- NDC Information and Results The NDC homepage on the MFNZ website.
- Success in NDC The article I wrote for Model Flying World, the MFNZ magazine a couple of years ago (pre-COVID) which gives some idea of how one club approached the problem of getting competition started.
- Model Flying New Zealand The New Zealand national modelling organisation’s website.
All images by the author. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
