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Category: Archive 2013

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1. World Champs Commentary
2. World Champs Links
3. Canada Cup Correction

The World Champs results have been published both on the organizer's and Free Flight News web sites so we are not including them here.

I think the World Champs can be summed up in Ian Kaynes' words at the closing ceremony when he said that Mongolia has a tough act to follow with the 2015 Champs.

At every World Champs people complain about various things to organizer does; often the biggest complaints are about the smallest things by people who have never run a World Champs. At this event there was close to perfect weather. The organizer provided a significant infrastructure that supported the contestants and the vast team of volunteers needed to run the event. Clearly the entry fees went back into the running the event and making it a success and not lining their pockets. So what if their web site had buttons in flash and some people could not read them on their iPhone; blame Steve Jobs, not the organizer. They clearly had a good working relationship with the local citizens and farmers as well using the resources of the Department and Region. The parade of the opening ceremony going through the village was a very nice touch and better than walking around a sports field; and the closing ceremony with the Michael Jones concert was something different. By the way, is he related the the USA Team manager ? There were a few delays here and there but we were probably as guilty as the organizers. As a side comment sure it was very disappointing that the Poitou was canceled and this caused all kinds of second guessing and 20/20 hind sight and to what could have, should have been done. Some people even canceled their trip to the World Champs believing that they would not happen. Having been on a World Champs organization team and seen the coordination required to support the event, I know it is not easy and there is little point in second guessing.

Looking at F1A. Judging by the proportion of max outs, 62 out of 115, the weather conditions were nice and the standard of flying was high. It is fairly obvious that 210 seconds for the first round is fairly easy, maybe should be more ? It is not necessary to have LDA or super flapper to beat that time early in the morning. One of the encouraging items about the this champs as a whole is the excellent performance by younger sportsmen such as Robert Lesko and Szilard Szijarto. Of equal importance to the veteran camp was seeing Peter Allnutt get on the first page and finish one place ahead of the last World Champ Yuri Titov. Those non-European teams appreciate the effort that Argentinians [Ramiro, Lucas and Pablo] did to finish first in the team prize. Traveling a long way, with high travel and luggage costs plus limited helpers, makes it so much harder. The length of the flight line plus the even longer flight line for the fly off, made it harder for both the contestants and organizers. But the rules require that each team moves down the entire line so a 7 pole move was needed. With a line that long there were clear weather and terrain differences along the line so everyone got to experience the different conditions.

F1B day was a whole lot tougher air wise. There were 31 max outs out of 105, a much smaller proportion than in F1A. There were serious doldrums in rounds 6 and 7. People who flew early in those rounds burnt a lot of the clock causing some anxious moment at the end of the round and a high number of new drops in round 6. It is significant than no team was clean in F1B. The young movement started in F1A continued in F1B with excellent performances by Albert and Brian who took first and third. Even though the fly off was shorter at “only” 31 sportsmen, it appeared that generally bad air for most of the 5 minute round, plus some mistakes by veteran sportsman and the curvature of the ground was fairly or unfairly tough on the flyer and helped to reduce the number that went to the 7 minute round. I guess I can say that since I was one of those people. The line was moved to improve visibility for the 7 minute round but either Albert Bulatov's flapper is worth an extra 100 seconds, unlikely, or he got a sweeter piece of air than any one else. The air at this time was not really super either.

F1C demonstrated the excessive performance of a well trimmed model. This event had the highest percentage of max outs. The whole day had fairly neutral conditions and even non-super models did very well. Drops tended to be caused by sportsman error, such as launching to one side or off tune motor, rather than bad air picking. Because the F1C models have such a large glide circle it was necessary to change the flight line twice to try and avoid models landing in the car park or sun flowers. F1C crashes tend to be more spectacular and a number of models did not appear to have a radio engine cut off and d/t. That should probably be obligatory for F1C. Contrary to the other events where the young were winning this one came down to a one-on-one fly off between Evgeny Verbitsky and Roy Summersby. Verbitsky is the godfather of F1C, being tremendously consistent over the years, but this was not his day; maybe his engine was a bit off song, maybe the air didn't cooperate. Who knows. Summersby has worked at F1C for almost as long as Verbitsky and that was his day.

The first time win of the Challenge France by the USA team was a major achievement. Over the entire contest they only dropped 4 seconds. Congrats to Team Manager Charlie Jones, his assistant René Limberger, and the team of supporters who did a great job in retrieving. Oh and the 9 sportsmen who delivered the goods! Also a good omen for the USA was 2012 Junior F1B Brian Pacelli's third place over all in F1B, beating all the big names.

World Champs Links

F1C flyoff - new 

http://youtu.be/W6xB1-Tv2ME

 Organizer's results

http://moncontour2013.vol-libre-moncontourois.fr/English/Results_En.html

FFn Results Page

http://www.freeflightnews.org.uk/champs/ch13/ff13.htm

We would like to include more links in future SEN issues so when you get home and photos and videos organized send us the links.

 Canada Cup correction

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Roger Morrell

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