Csóka László

My best Pichlingersee Regatta ever

Posted on April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 by csokasails

Now I’m sitting at the University and thinking about last week’s regatta. I still not realized completely what happened there exactly. I always hope the best and also worked really hard but I did not expect such a good performance. I dreamed about it but not expected.

After the F5-10 victory on Wednesday I tried not to loose myself psychologically. In the F5-E I reached my aim, after some technological issues I kept my balance and finished 3rd overall. After the two classes I felt really happy, it was already my best Pichlingersee performance ever and the F5-M Europe Cup stage just started next day.

In the F5-M my aim was again to stay focused and not to fall apart. At the first races in light wind conditions I fight with Pavel Novotny and Massimo Morin a lot. Also after the first day we were in the first three places in overall. Second day the wind conditions became stronger, I worried about it, because I knew that there will be changes in the fleet others would be faster. Luckily I hadn’t got speed problems and managed to increase the lead in overall. Finally one of my dreams came true and I won the F5-M Pichlingersee Europe Cup Stage for the first time in my life. Pavel Novotny finished 2nd and Massimo Morin 3rd at the end in a really big battle between them and 4th Max Lehmann.

Thank you for Gyöngyösi Cecília and Országh Tibor who created the possibility for me in travel to compete all the 6 days and also thank you for all your support during the competition!

Thank you for my family for their support!

Thank you for all those guys who helped me before and during the Regatta!

And also a big thank you for those who cheered for me in these six days!

All my result from Pichlingersee:

1st place F5-10

3rd place F5-E

1st place F5-M

1st place in Combination of the 3 classes

Live your dreams!

Csóka László

Tricky Rijeka

Posted on March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 by csokasails

Yesterday we arrived back home from 22nd Rijeka’s Regatta. I’m really happy now because I was able to reach my goals. Much more than I expected.

In my previous blog post I wrote about what were my two aims for this Regatta. First I wanted to gain some speed in stronger conditions because I worked hard previously to figure out why I struggle when the stronger wind appear. Fortunately I reached this aim, on the second day with B rig I didn’t feel disadvantage in my boat speed compared to others. More tension on the shrouds brought the expected result.

My other goal was to finish in top 5. I had never finished better than 7th place on a croatian regatta. The conditions were tricky on this competiton, we had shifty wind all the time, lots of races were abandoned before the first mark because the wind shifted so much. In Hungary we usually have shifty wind conditions, I raced lots of times in these, therefore I didn’t feel bad about it. Honestly I enjoyed the races. Unfortunately this caused that we had just the qualification rounds, and can’t race in golden and silver fleet. The results finally based on the 6 qualification round results.

This time finally I was able to finish 4th in overall, I’m so happy about it! This is my best result ever in a croatian regatta.

For me the IOM spring season in Croatia is over, but I will surely compete there in autumn. Now I’m focusing on the 21. International Pichlingersee Regatta.

Here you can find the overall results: 22nd Rijeka’s Regatta results

Check Compass Magazin’s facebook page for pictures: Pictures on Compass Magazin

Thanks to my girlfriend for her support, and for the awesome pictures she photographed!

Thanks to the race organizers for this regatta! Next year I hope we will compete in Rijeka again!

Thanks to the hungarian team for their support, and for the awesome mood!

Live your dreams!

Csóka László

It’s Rijeka time now!

Posted on March 11, 2016March 11, 2016 by csokasails

I’m really excited, we will travel to Rijeka today. It will be the 22nd Rijeka’s Regatta and the last Croatian competition for me at spring time.

Last time in Rogoznica I was able to break through my boarders, I was able to reach my best result in the croatian fleet ever. Before that regatta I felt fear, because I thought I’m standind in one place. I worked hard to be better and better, but it seemed before Rogoznica it hadn’t got an impact. I think you know that feeling: One step forward, one step back.

This time I’m optimistic! Optimistic despite of the weather forecast, which says we will have storng wind on saturday and much bigger on sunday. I’m better in slow wind conditions and I also had set up issues in strong wind with my boat. I doesn’t feel confortable in these situations.

So why I’m so optimistic?

I worked hard in the last few weeks to make modifications on my rigs to reach more speed. I applied new fittings on my B and C rigs, and also pre-bended masts. I modified the points of the shrouds to a lower position, and also I applied an adjusable spreader (from Jelacic Sailing) on the B rig. I also put more tension on the shrouds on every rig. I think it they were so loose before, it also could have been the problem which slow me down in stronger conditions. This competition will be great to test all the upgrades.

I always set goals before competitions. This time I would like to finish in the first 5. Previously it was always the first 10 in the croatian fleet, but now I think I have to raise the bar, because last time in Rogoznica I broke through this aim. And of course I have other goals too as always: Learn, learn, learn!

Live your dreams!

Csóka László

Battery wars Chapter 1. Update

Posted on March 5, 2016March 5, 2016 by csokasails

Last time I wrote about bad battery detection, and Mr. Nigel Winkley drew my attention to the right LiPo/LiFe battery storage. I didn’t know before about the special method to store these batteries.

I looked for more information on the internet and I can just confirm Mr. Nigel Winkley’s words: “LiPos don’t like to be stored discharged but you shouldn’t store them fully charged either. Good chargers have a program to give that correct charge if you plan on storing over longer periods. When you want to use them again, discharge them before fully charging and they will give you good performance for a couple of seasons racing.”

Here are the sources where you can find more information about this process:

Tips for Storing your LiPo Batteries

Click to access lipo%20storage%20tips.pdf

I also looked for this program in my battery charger and surprisingly I found it. I tried it with my LiFe batteries, because I will use them just in May. The program worked well, I used the automatic built in values.

At this point I think battery storage function will worth it for me.

Live your dreams!

Csóka László

Battery wars Chapter 1.

Posted on February 29, 2016March 2, 2016 by csokasails

Do you ever feel the pain when your battery betrayed you during a key moment at an RC sailing competition? I hope not, because I felt it two times during the years, it was horrible.

So what can we do to avoid this disaster?

In Hungary we are at the beginning of the new season in RC sailing and it’s time for thinking about the batteries. Old batteries can cause suffering at the first competitions if they aren’t in good conditions.

But what does „not in a good condition” mean in case of a battery? There is a method with multimeter to detect the bad cells, but not nearly everybody has this device, and also just a few RC sailors can use it correctly. I don’t like this method.

I use my battery charger to detect bad batteries. I think this is an easy way and everybody can do it during winter battery maintenance. Just an ordinary programmable charger is good for this which is able to discharge batteries beside the charging function. This is how I detect bad batteries:

Discharge the battery: I discharge the NIMH batteries to 1.0V/cell, in case of Life and Lipo batteries this voltage value is built in the charger.

Charge the battery: I charge it like in any other normal case

At the end of the charging method check how much mAh got into the battery. Compare it with the real value written on the battery: At this point I have a feedback of the condition of the battery.

Discharge the battery again.

At this point I have the full feedback of the battery condition, because I know how much mAh was in the battery and how much could it perform from it during the discharge.

It’s judgment time: In step 5. if the battery performance is under 80-90% comparing to the step 3 than it’s time for thinking about buying a new one. If the performance is above 90% than it is still OK and I just made a battery maintenance with discharging and charging. (In the example pictures the batteries are 700mAh Life 2S packs, at the second discharge the 650mAh discharge value is over 90%, so I should keep that pack.) This case I always charge the batteries again, they don’t like to be fully discharged for a longer time.

I hope this post will be useful for you in RC sailing! In my next one I would like to show which type of batteries I use in my RC boats.

Live your dreams!

Csóka László

Starting point

Posted on February 24, 2016March 2, 2016 by csokasails

I’m glad to say my english language site is now open. I hope you will enjoy the blog as much as I enjoy writing my impressions about RC Sailing in it. In the future I would like to show my RC Sailing life.

At this point I’m preparing for Rijeka IOM Regatta with Hungarian friends. We have 3 more weeks for preparing method. In Rogoznica I really enjoyed competing with the croatian RC sailors in January. For me it was the first time when I truly felt that the gap between me and them started to shrink.
In the first two days in slow wind conditions (we have lots of slow wind condition competition in Hungary) I was able to race with the top sailors and of course I was really happy about itt hat I was ont he 3rd place in overall after two days of competing, and the only foreigner in the Golden fleet of the Croatian Nationals.

On the third day of Rogoznica the wind conditions changed, the wind started to blow stronger and my great form disappeared. I lost some speed with the boat, and mentally I coludn’t control my races, everything happened much faster. Luckily it was a really instructive competition for me, I learnt a lot, and I was happy that I made my best result in Croatia ever with a 7th place overall.

After Rogoznica I thought much about my boats speed. My Kantun S was fast in slow wind conditions but when the wind became stronger (we used „A” rigs it wasn’t a need for „B”) it’s speed slowly melted. Now I’m triing to figure out what happened, in the hungarian fleet I usually don’t have boat speed problems in these conditions.

When I will have the solution for this problem I’m going to share with you immediately.

Live your dreams!

Csóka László