In the Torino area we had the last of the rainy & snowy days in November, then nothing ... at least nothing until the week before the Spring Race! After a week of rain, on the Saturday before the competition the sky was blue and the temperature close to 18 °C. But on the Sunday of the competition, the only good thing we had was grey sky, low temperature (<10°C) and rain "only" during the prize giving. That's all for the weather.

Due to "last minute" problems we had 7 teams in Goodyear / Simple Team Racing instead of the forecast 10, 5 competitors in Speed Profile 2.5 cc (a very simplified form of C/L speed) and 3 in Speed Profile 1.5 cc.

Considering that Goodyear / Simple Team Racing started in Italy during the last 1 to 2 years (the last experience was in '78 to'80), 7 teams is really not too bad, more or less the same number of teams that we had at Lucca during a previous GY/STR competition on 12th March. But 10 teams would have been better ...!

A simple but good organization gave the opportunity for everybody to fly three times, so everyone had fun "fighting" with all the other C/L enthusiasts.

GOODYEAR / STR

As the Italian GY/STR rules permit very different approaches, the equipment used was also very different:

• Only 2 teams were using flying wings (and one of them, Mauletti / Miani, was forced to change to a wing + tail model due to tank leakage on their flying wing). The others used more or less traditional GY models
• 5 glow engines vs. 3 diesel (Pelliconi / Pelliconi started with a MVVS diesel, but in the final they used an OPS glow 3.5 cc)
• Only 1 team used a 3.5 cc engine to reach the final (Fiussello / Battistini), but their airspeed was close to other 2.5 cc glow engines (speeds were from 28 to 23 s/10 laps)
• All the used engines were "old" and/or cheap; no one used 1 million dollars engines ... it's really not necessary to spend a lot to have fun:
• OPS 3.5cc glow ~20 years old
• OPS 2.5 cc glow
• Supertigre X15 2.5 cc glow ~20 years old
• MVVS 2.5 FI diesel
• MVVS 2.5 FI glow
• KMD 2.5 diesel
• All the propellers were of the "commercial plastic" type, mainly APC, more or less reworked (reduced diameter and balanced)<.li>

In our previous competitions, the definition of the event of an aeromodeller with more than 40 years of experience was: "whoever is able to start and restart the engine wins" ... sometimes this was still true, but some teams were able to improve their performance in comparison with the result of the previous Spring Race. But some had bad luck, as usual ... that's racing (also in STR!).

Looking at the competitors, they can be divided in the following way:

• 1 F2B active flyer (Fiussello, member of the Italian F2B team last year in Valladolid)
• 2 F2B judges (Martinengo, Privitera)
• 3 F2A active flyers (Muzio, Guasco and Tommaso Pelliconi, the last was a member of the Italian F2A team last year in Valladolid)
• 8 C/L enthusiasts, 2 or 3 of them can be considered as "real newcomers" and among whom the average age was close to 30.

It was fine to see 2 "father & son" teams (as usual, the father is always the pit man), and also good to see people mainly involved in other classes. We really do hope that in future we will have new or "almost new" faces amongst us!

I don't want to bore anybody describing what happened during the heats, but let me give you just a few words on the final:

• Teams: Fiussello / Battistini (4'43"), Muzio / Mocchetti (4'53"), Pelliconi / Pelliconi (6'36")
• The first attempt finished almost immediately due to problem with cables and models at the take off. As the judge (Enrico Macchi, ex F2C pilot) decided that none of the involved teams did anything wrong, it was decided to proceed with a second attempt with all 3 of the above teams
• At the start of the second attempt the models were all up within 2 to 3 laps
• The speed of all teams was around 23.5 to 24.5 s/10 laps, so overtaking was not so easy
• The Pelliconi team suffered from difficult starting at the pit stops, but the other 2 teams were both able to manage regular restarts within less than 5 flicks max
• At around 135 laps the Muzio model landed on the Pelliconi cables. The Pelliconi inner wing was off the ground and the pitman was ready to launch, so Pelliconi / Pelliconi were disqualified, Muzio / Mocchetti were placed 2nd and Fiussello / Battistini arrived at the end of the 200 laps to become the winners of the 2nd Spring Race

* But despite the anticipated conclusion, the final was really nice to see for all the competitors and for the spectators too

SPEED PROFILE

Models, Engines & Co:

• 2.5 cc class
• The engines are mainly derived from F2D and all are glow, but the winner used a Cyclon derived from the free flight model
• Someone used the penny, others a pressurized tank (pressure from the engine)
• As in this category the fuel is free, no one knows exactly the nitro and oil percentages ... probably at least 10÷20% of nitro was the standard
• Propeller: all fibre (glass or carbon)
• 1.5 cc class
• All Cstkam engines more or less modified
• No pressure feeding admitted by the rules of this class: all uniflow tanks
• fuel & prop as 2.5 cc class

Only Fiussello and Battistini used a flying wing model (Mejizlik profile team racer), the others used profile model with different approach regarding the area of the wing and the tailplane.

Article by Enrico Mauletti, photo by Fulvio Miani and Carlo Guasco.

The results plus some pictures are below.

Tutti pronti per la finale del GY/STR: Fiussello / Battistini, Muzio / Mocchetti, Pelliconi / PelliconiTR & STR

La finale del Goodyear/STR: a destra - da sinistra a destra: Pelliconi, Muzio e Fiussello di spalle /a sinistra - Pelliconi, Fiussello e Muzio in sorpasso TR + STR