Schweizermeisterschaft F3B 2007

Last weekend was hold Swiss F3B Nats. Podium was formed by Bohlen Family. Andreas flew a new plane... This time a Precious... Are we going to see in WC two pair of brothers flying planes from same builder?. I think I'm going to see an amazing fight between Herrig and Bohlen brothers :-)

Photos
Results
Report (google translation)

XXXIII Torneo Villa de Madrid

Lot of time with no updates, I have been a litlle bit bussy this week because my job. Last weekend I was in Madrid in XXXIII Torneo Villa de Madrid. My father and me travel on Friday to make some flights in the field, we made more changes of lines than flights because the strong wind, I was afraid the weekend would be a nightmare but finally wind wasn't a matter :-)

The contest was going to start at 3 o'clock so we went to the field in the morning to set the tent, boxes and winches. We were 32 pilots and we just made two rounds (one per day). Very strong wind all weekend long so you had to take care in launches. The key of this contest (every year) is to be very careful, we never made more than three rounds, so If you make a fail you lost all your oportunities to get a good classification. I had this idea in my mind and after a horrible result in f3b nats I wanted to make a good performance and... I got it!!!!

Yes, I made my best result in a national contest 4th classified, that would be third because a wrong decision of the organzization (not unique). More people was affected by this decision. In round 1 of duration two pilots of the same team had to fly in the same group, they made an unofficial claim and after the answer of the organization they refused to fly this task. Second sad event was that organization join two pilots with the same frecuency in a duration group, the pilots lost their planes, one of them was a Portuguese pilot. Portuguese pilots decided to retire from the contest because they were very upset with organization.

Personally and fortunately I didn't have any problem but I understand pilots. Is very dificult to organize a f3b contest in Spain, there's no aeromodelling clubs with enough infrastructure. Grupo Halcon Club made this year the 33th edition of this contest. Congratulations guys! But I think in this kind of event you have to controll 100% some things like radio frecuencies. We practice a very expensive hobby/sport (at least for me) and when I pay a inscription for a contest I think that I transfer control frecuencies and a lot of more things to an Organization. By the way I'm sure there will be a 34^th edition, taking care of what happened this year.

In positive side... Spanish pilots have improved very hard in speed task. Daniel Portella got a new Spanish Speed Record: 16,16 seconds. And a lot of pilots flew under 18 seconds (not me) I made two 19 seconds speed flights. In one year I have improved about 5 seconds, so I'm very happy with it. Next events in Kassel and Emmen. Two contests with an amazing high level. Then will be time to enjoy and learn as much as possible.

Results

Photos

2nd BMFA F3B UK League. 29th April 2007

New report about F3B UK League by Chris Jubb:

"Another good turn out for the second league event. Only a couple of the regular B leaguers not flying due to lack of models.

It was good to see the new B league pilots here again. Mark Passingham and Ken Woodhouse taking advantage of Ken’s motor home to make a weekend out of it. By all accounts a little extra practice on Saturday and a lot of wine Saturday night .

Weather was quite kind to us, not quite as poor as the forecast predicted.

After the pilots briefing from Clive Needham the competion started at 10:00.

Our normal program was flown to this schedule. A then B Duration Round 1. A and B Distance Round 1 and 2

A and B Speed Round 1 and 2 . Ending with the A and B R2 duration.

This schedule allows Clive to populate all of the manning and timing requirements at Bases A and B with little shuffling of helpers.

Round 1 A league Duration.

Slot1. Steve Haley (Estrella) took top honours just out landing Jonathon Wells( PlusTask), in Round 2 a couple of crossed lines forced a re-fly for the group. Dave Worrall ( Crossfire x) took 1000 points from his attempt and elected not to re-fly. John Whittle took best advantage from the refly to score 1000.

Round 1 B league Duration.

John Stewart (Europhia) took best advantage and outflew the rest in slot 1 by 1min.10s.

Mark Southall battled against Clive Needham also flying a Tragi and Ken Woodhouse with his x tail Crossfire to emerge the victor for slot 2.

Rounds 1 & 2 A League Distance.

Round 1. Bill Haley took advantage of some great air to take top spot in S1 flying his new Furio.

Steve Haley and John Whittle tied with 24 laps in slot 2 with Dave Worrall taking the lead in S3 with 24 laps.

Round 2.

Slots 1,2&3 showed some excellent close flying in more consistent air. Simon Jackson, Dave Worall and Paul Carrington headed their slots to take top points. Paul was flying his modified Skorpion F3B with single strand wire turbulator just in front of the aileron surface.

Rounds 1 & 2 B League Distance.

Clive Needham flying his new Tragi and Mark Passingham won both round slots with newcomer Keith Whitton winning slot 3. Keith has come back to soaring after a long absence. He is currently flying a veteran Calypso Contest . Its great to see him doing well.

Round 1&2 A league Speed.

Steve Haley again recorded the fastest speed time of 16.63s with Paul Carrington pushing his Skorpion to record 16.76

Round 2 Speed. Again Steve reigned supreme with 15.56 with Simon Jackson the closest to him with 17.16.

Round 1&2 B league Speed.

Round 1 Mark Southall flew superbly to record 19.16 using his Tragi a clear 2 seconds faster than the rest of the field.

Unfortunately Ken Woodhouse launched his Crossfire into the ground after a mix up resulting in his model not being switched on. He did however change to his backup model (Arris) for round 2. Mark Passingham won the second round with a great run of 19.91.

Round 2 A League Duration. Slot 1 saw poor conditions and Bill Haley managed to overcome the rest but only recording a 4min47s flight.

Slot 2 Simon Jackson managed take advantage of the better conditions to squeeze home with 10.01 and maximum landing bonus.

Round 2 B League Duration.

By the time the B league final duration was held the quality of the air had improved and Ken Woodhouse showed that his Arris could take advantage of the available good air to record a win in slot 1. Slot 2 was just taken by John Stewart with Mark Passingham only just 1 second away.

These two flyers have only 4.3 points separating them from 1^st and 2^nd in the league. It promises to be a closely fought season.

Next League event is:- League 3 on SATURDAY 19^th May. Venue Retford Wetlands. Start 10:00 prompt."

Photos
Results

T-Shirt Design

I'm working in F3B at Home t-shirt with the help of my sister (a futer designer), these are the first ideas. What do you think?

Front Option 1

Front Option 2

Back Option 1

UK F3B League 2 Venue, Wetlands. 29th April 2007

Results of second contest of UK League have been published in Barcs sie. The winner of A League was Steve Halley with a Estrella JD... JD? Results here. Leader Board here.

Contest 2 of the 2007 North Island F3B Series

AucklandSoar hosted the second contest of 2007 North Island F3B Series at Matamata. You can see full results in Chris Kaiser site. The winner was Chris Kaiser with a Ellipse 2V.

1 Chris Kaiser Ellipse 2V 11782.7
2 David James Big Sting 11619.9
3 Les Stockley Crossfire 11594.0
4 Rhys James Ellipse 3C 11421.7
5 Rod Hale Crossfire 10413.8
6 John Dolphin Eraser 9789.5
7 Merv Malcomson Frazer 9175.9
8 Sharn Davies Eraser 7861.6
9 Richard Thompson Europhia 5502.6

A League and B League.after two contests, here.

F3B World Champs Field

Now we have in f3b-wm.ch the site plan, I remembered some years ago there was a Eurotour Contest in Emmen Airfield. In modellfluggeil.ch there's a lot of photos so you can take an idea about how looks the field.

Ceres... New Ceres... Big Ceres!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jiri Baudis is developing very fast his Ceres, SoaringUSA.com is announcing the last version of this plane: Big Ceres, now with cross tail. Sourced from SoaringUSA.com:

"The New Big Ceres F3B is in... 139 in. of beauty.. 1128 sq. in. And we are also stocking the E version! This plane is made to go fast, and the fit and finish are A quality! Our friends at Baudis model continue to impress us with their workmanship, and engineering abilities! Good job Jiri!
The Ceres F3B/F 3M is close behind, and should be arriving in our shop soon. There has already been a couple appearances in Europe, look for the first wins to come very soon!"

Daryl Perkins website

Daryl Perkins has a personal website. It's still under construction and we just can see a photo of Schizo (his new project).

F3B Spanish Championship 2007

Last weekend I was in F3B Spanish Championship 2007. F3B at Home Team (Sergi Subias, Fernando Valls and Sergi Valls) had to defend his trophy of year 2006... Impossible Mission. Every year there's fewer pilots. Like last contest in Palencia I was very well in one task, speed, I improve my personal score two times. Now my best speed is 19,50 seconds. Last best speed was 20,90... No comments, I know what you think. I got 14th place from 17 pilots and 4th place from 6 teams. I'm a little upset with my results but I know my "restricitions”, now I'm faster than ever, I got the 4 best average speed. It's a pitty this contest was not a Speed Cup :-P

Amazing perfomance of Portella Team, they won the Team trophy. All of them flew Walter Reist's planes. New Age and also Warp worked very good. Dani got his third National Championship and he is going to win more, I'm sure... Javier and Alberto has improved a lot his flight features since they are flying with Warp. Sometimes the plane improves the pilot.

Jesus and Ruben Merinos (2^nd & 3^rd) stroke again with his brand new Crossfire . I think their performance have stood up because they have a very good third member in the team: Miguel Casares, one of the best pilots in the little history of spanish f3b, After a rest of some years he has came back

Nunca Mais Team had the absence of the youngest pilot in Spain, Adrian Rodriguez. Alvaro went on with Furio and Jose Manuel Quintas has new planes this season: Ceres and Trinity, most of contest was flying Ceres. I think one week ago Quintas had a little crash with his Crossfire and he take the adventage to test his new planes. I think Ceres is a very interesting option with a lighter version.

Iñaki Elizondo, one of the strongest pilots got the 8^th position, this time flew with the Aris that won La Muela F3F International Contest. He is waiting for Radical but it doesn't arrive. So this time had to fly in not optimum conditions.

This time we had a new pilot, Marcos Martinez. He was attended by Carles Aymat and Andoni Gorriñobeaskoa. Marcos made nice photo's that you can see in his site. Friday afternnon made his first launches with his Tempus and next day began his first f3b competition. Very good Marcos!

And what about the F3B at Home Team...? Well, Sergi Subias flew very good, we had two mistakes in his flights: we lost task time in one of the distances and we made a 0 in last speed (we wait too much for launching, we made three launches and we spend working time before finish the task). Anyway he was fourth, and probably he would be 3rd if he had made the last speed :-( Our surprise was when the organization published for first time the individual results where Sergi Subias was 1st classified and Daniel Portella 2nd. Finally the results were corrected and the winner was Dani. My father had a lot of problems all weekend long. Friday evening decided to fly with Nyx Furio. He had been long time without flying Furio and that was a big handicap. Persoanlly it has been a bad contest but at least I have improved a lot in speed task, Madrid will be a new chance. And also Kassel and Emmen!!!!! I will fly in world cup, so I have to work very hard!!!!!!

Photos made by Marcos Martinez
Photos made by Sergi Subias & Sergi Valls
Individual results
Team Results

New video from Kirchheim Open

There's a new video about Kircheim open in f3b.de, 40 megas.