I appreciate Mac the Bigot’s concern for the health of our beloved F1A sport, but I came away from the February contests with a much different view.  What could be more exciting and healthy for the event but to see all 3 contests won not by expensive and complicated flappers, but by a simple fixed wing model with a low drag airfoil!  Roland Koglot proved to the world that a basic model with nothing much new other than an F1C like airfoil could actually launch higher than most of the flappers and glide very well and he put these models together himself although he does have people that build wings for him.  In the flyoff at the AZM / Ike contest both Roland and Per Findahl’s flapper were launched within seconds of each other in similar air and both glided down at close to the same rates.  Roland ended up winning with only slightly more time which could have been no more than the difference of how long the timers could see the models as both flights were in the 7 minute range in late evening air.  So in this case the simple fixed model and a flapper went neck and neck to the finish line.

During the early morning flyoffs at both the Pan Am Cup and the Maxmen Roland won in rather decisive fashion beating the flappers by around 30 or 40 seconds.  It is interesting to note that second place in the Maxmen was Andrew Barron flying a standard conventional model of the type we all have been flying for years and he beat a few other flappers on the field!  Andrew did it with plain old great flying by simply getting a really strong launch using his trademark thin towline.  I don’t think our conventional models are done yet.  They are still as competitive as anything when flown during the thermal rounds where it is all about air anyway, and most of our flyoffs are still flown when there are at least some thermals as well and anyone can win if they choose the best strategy.  These 3 February contests were an anomaly in that all three had flyoffs in relatively calm non thermal air which clearly favored Roland, but don’t forget that 2^nd place by Andrew in the dead air!

We should all be excited that building or buying models like Roland flew should be easier than ever and not necessarily expensive.  The wings are thicker than the old norm at around 7 to 8% which makes building strong much easier!  (dare I use the term “building models”!)  One of Roland’s models was a convention D-box structure so any enterprising modeler could procure some F1C D-box shells and build a set of wings similar to Roland’s.  Roland’s other model had a molded foam core wing that he had a friend build for him.  This is nothing more than pretty standard RC glider wing technology.  If one doesn’t want to jump into it like I have (and see that it really isn’t very hard) it certainly wouldn’t be that hard to connect with an RC glider builder and have some wings built.  The price would still be way below that of flapper wings!  And of course there are already some free flight builders making wings with the new BE airfoils available.

Finally some people came away thinking that Roland must be running much faster than us mere mortals.  Allard just posted a video of one of Roland’s launches of Facebook.  It is interesting to note that Roland did not appear to be running particularly fast and yet his launch was tremendously high.  I observed the same thing during the week that his run looked pretty much like many other flyers, but his timing and technique were perfect.  So I believe that the winning ingredients are available to a wide range of flyers and not just those with real big wallets or real muscular legs, but rather those that are willing to make the necessary investment of time and energy with a few $ thrown in.  Isn’t that the way it should be?