BTW League - Race #4

Mar 29

5 min read

Updated: Oct 13

What a great day of racing, it was full throttle from the very beginning!

The room needed a bit of hoover loving to make it race worthy (not like that) and with Jayson's train cancelled due to its unsurprising unreliability, I was rushing around to get things ready and pick him up. But with the crumbs contained and Beryl onboard we arrived to find Blueprint et al starting to set up the track. And with a bit of help we soon had an absolute cracker of a track, ready for the race.

Honestly, this was a really good one, with plenty of interesting shapes, technical and flowy sections and some serious height which is always a nice challenge. Blueprint wanted a straight gunshot run of gates and this proved to be a really good and surprisingly tricky feature. Flying in a straight line is harder than you think haha! My favourite bit must have been the sweeping high speed section through the timing gate into the first spiral. Getting that right was really satisfying. But then so was the 360 left into 360 right up the tower… and the 360 dive back down it… oh it really was a good track. Even if I do say so myself, I was very pleased with this one.

With six pilots signed up, we set off qualifying in 2 rounds of 3 pilots meaning we had beautiful video and plenty of space. Or so you'd think. Blueprint still managed to down draft slam Rossco into the deck on the final corner. Kinda frustrating for Rossco, but Blueprint’s gotta do what he's gotta do to get a good qualifying time. And he really was looking good for the majority of the qualifying up till lunch, beating out Pickle and Eco, two very quick pilots when his whoops are working and he's not crashing, respectively.

Rebuild Over Lunch

I had a worrying time with my whoop built off the matrix board with a reaper vtx. I’d been nursing a broken frame for a while, but the vibrations were terrible so Eco kindly gave me a spare to swap in. All the screws out of one and into the other and all of a sudden I had a runaway whoop. Any hint of throttle and it went to the moon. Nightmare! I got my best qualifying time with this whoop and now it was fixed, but un-fly-able!

I spent lunch flashing and tweaking the board and after a couple of attempts, including going completely back to basics, I got it working. Now it was flying beautifully! So smooth and significantly faster! I can't remember if i had a throttle cap on, but i needed one as I was just bouncing around, but it was flying and that's what I needed. The alternative was an Air65 board that gets drunk-gyro after one crash. This does force you to fly cleanly because crashing is just not an option, but i wouldn't win races like that.

Continuing tradition, Pickle was surrounded by a fog of solder fumes for the whole day. No sooner had one motor been fixed but another need attention. We advise the liberal application of flux. It's like a soldering cheat code and prevents pigeon poop solder blobs. Some say, pickles are their own flux… but I’m not convinced.

Qualifying Results

12 rounds of qualifying down, is way more than any other race already, but after lunch we had 3 more to get back into the flow. (And allow me to thoroughly test the rebuilt whoop) Then it was race time!

B Main Finals

Blueprint, Beryl and Rossco started off the running and immediately Blueprint had a mechanical. Motor wire. Sitting out the round with a DNF, this left it wide open for Rossco to claim an easy 1st with Beryl in 2nd.

Then after a short intermission to allow the quickest trackside repair I think I've ever seen, Blueprint was back. And he wasn't messing around. With his best flight of the night he cruised to a 1st place finish with ease. Meanwhile Rossco and Beryl had some connection issues. Rossco fought thru and secured 2nd but Beryl couldn't do the same and got pegged with a DNF.

Finally, we had a clean, fast race, where everyone who started, finished. Blueprint managed another 1st place finish, Rossco in 2nd and Beryl picked up 3rd. But even with 2 out of 3 of the 1st place finishes, Blueprint was pipped to the 1st place spot on points. Just 2 points prevented his submission, all because he got a DNF in the first round! Rossco therefore win on points

A Main Finals

Now it was time for the A Main between Minirollsrule, Eco FPV and Pickle FPV.

Try as hard as I could, I just could not launch this newly smooth handling whoop. In all races, I jumped off the line and immediately crashed into the first gate. This consistently gave Eco and Pickle a chance to get ahead early. That is, if Pickles whoop would work. His first race was cut short by a motor wire, AGAIN, landing him a DNF. But with a bit of luck Minirollsrule managed to cinch 1st, with Eco taking 2nd.

With the adrenaline running high it was all about Eco and Pickle with a great race between them while i was crashing all over the place. In the end Eco got 1st and Picked 2nd but it was close!

Then, in what should have been the last race (fore-shadowing), Pickle finally got his whoop working, got his head down and had a great race. He's a really quick kid when he wants to be and deserved the 1st place. Minirollsrule took 2nd and Eco in 3rd. But this is when the shadow of Pickles DNF returned to ruin his day. If he has finished that race and even managed 3rd, we would all have now been tied on points. This would have given him a chance at 1st place as we went into a head to head, sudden death, race off between Minirollsrule and Eco FPV.

Jumping off the line i was determined not to crash on the first gate again. I managed to make it through a few before an unlucky side swipe from Eco sent me down and let him keep flying. From then on, I was playing catch up. Eco did a great job of keeping calm and flying cleanly, but he cant have had a completely clean flight. Every time I could see him a few gates ahead and thought o could catch him, i would crash and have to start reeling him back in again. With only 3 laps, the last time this happened i saw him cross the finish line and there wasnt enough track for me to catch him any more. It was a good race to break the tie, Eco coming out on top, Minirollsrule in 2nd and Pickle on 3rd