Asian Beach Games 2012 - Task 4 Accuracy Landing

Day one proved to be long for competitors with Competition Director Zhang Wei deciding to take advantage of the improving weather conditions to run a round of accuracy landing. Sea fog had reduced visibility to less than one kilometre for most of the day but now the fog had lifted and cloud base was high enough for the task to get underway.

Competitors had to fly to approximately 150m above ground level and then switch off their engine while overhead the target; a 5m landing mat with a 16cm pressure pad at its centre. The pad was able to measure distance in 1cm increments in order to be able to differentiate between the very best pilots.

The wind conditions served to increase the difficulty of this task; the onshore wind was registering at 4 to 5 metres per second, enough to catch many of the early starters out as they were unable to reach the mat when rounding out to land. Those lower down the start list were able to witness the problems their competitors were having and scores improved as the task went on.

There were some excellent landings with Jiri George MACAK again putting in a solid performance; he touched down just 2cm from the centre and took the honours again. Other notable achievements included Nopar INTHARAUMNUAY (THA) who was 8cm off the centre, joined at that distance by Guangqiang SHENG (CHN). The top 7 pilots managed to hit the mat and record a score of 16cm or less.

This task is not easy but the local conditions brought out the best in the Asian Beach Games athletes, putting in truly world class efforts and then getting the appropriate results.

Results are available at http://results.haiyang2012.com.

[flickr user=me tag="acclandABG2012"7542"]