F3A World Champs update -- Marc Wolffe

Well guys, the prelims are over, and now for the top 27 pilots, the fun begins! Unfortunately, none of the South Africans made the fly-off, although at one stage it looked possible that I could make it. No excuses, but the weather conditions were, to say the very least, atrocious, with 90 degree cross winds blowing at 10.5 meters per second during my last round flight. the cut-off for calling the competition off is 12 meters per second! The wind did ease up a bit (not very much though) during the course of the day,and the scores started to improve as the judges started to get used to the strange attitude that the model would present to try and maintain a level and even path.

One thing is for sure, the top guys are masters of the art and it almost looks like the wind is not blowing when they fly, although they are working very hard at this illusion! From a technological point of view, there is nothing really ground breaking to report on that has appeared on the scene since France in 2005. Only 2 biplanes were flown in the prelims, one by QQ and the other by the Chinese youngster... we have yet to see what Onda son will be flying in the F schedules, might also be a bipe. The only other "new" item to break cover was the contra rotating propeller, which was flown in the prelims by Frederick from Singapore. Having watched his flight, it appears that this unit makes a lot of noise (although it did clear the noise test) and was rather under powered. Sabastiono Silvestri from Italy also had a contra equipped Angel's Shadow, although rumours were that he didn't fly it because the power output was less than the standard prop equipped model and the wind was too strong for the less powerful model. These two models, although similar, were very different, with Sebastiano opting for a single Hacker motor driving the two props through a gearbox, while Frederick was using two smaller motors, one driving through the other.

Other than that, most of the models were either from Oxai, Extreme Composites, or CA Models, with a very small minority being scratch built. I do not have the official stats, but at a guess, I would say that the ratio of Four stroke to Electric is about 50 :50, and the two stroke is dead in the water! The flying style is close... very close, although, when the heavy cross wind was blowing in, they did push it out to about 150m and flew relatively fast, so as to minimize the "skew weathercock" look that the plane assumes when flying cross wind.
Today has been a rest day, hence the relatively lengthy report, but tomorrow the first two rounds of the finals begin with the top 27 pilots, who will each fly two rounds of the much more difficult F schedule. after that, the field will be further reduced to the top 10, who will then each fly another two rounds of UNKNOWN manoeuvres that will be given to them the night before. They will then be required to fly this schedule twice on Saturday before the scores are tallied and the world champion is announced at a gala banquet on Saturday night.

Team positions, which are determined by the prelim flights only, are now official...Team France are the World Champions, followed closely by the USA and Japan. South Africa came in at 14th ... up 1 position from the previous champs in 2005.

That's it for now, I hope to report back on what went down at the finals tomorrow...


Carel, Ian and Marc.

Team F3A South Africa