First report on World Control Line Championships in Bulgaria from Keith Renecle

Hi All,

Sorry for this late report but things here get hectic. First up some great news. Conrad and Dirk put up a time in their first F2C heat with 3 pit stops. The time was 3:55.9 and with just 2 pitstops this will improve, so we shall see today. Conrad got their engine going well after very little practice time and during the 3-up race, Dirk managed very well. He got a couple of warnings for high flying and stuff but completed the heat in fine style so we are all very proud of the guys. Just getting through a 100 lap heat in a 3-up race sounds very basic, but it's a break-through for our guys. Anyone that has flown F2C will know just how quickly the aggressive pilots can get rid of the competition if they can. So now it should go a lot better with the next heat.

On the stunt side our electric models are working very well. The weather last week for the warm-up world cup competition was between 38 and 40 degrees and the flying side is in a park with big trees all around so you can imagine how turbulent it is. I placed 22nd out of 30.....just a few points behind Loren Nell (whats new??) and we each had one good flight out of 3. The judges don't seem to watch much of the non-experts so it's a bit of a crap-shoot. When it got cooler (29~30 degrees) on Monday for the first two rounds of the world champs, the wind came up and blew well over the 9 metres per second limit, but because the gusts don't always last 30 seconds, we just had to fly.The next few days the wind stopped and we all put in better rounds.

O.K. now its Saturday morning and the world champs are over and done. The results are on this link: http://www.f2abcd.com/results.php

I placed 38th and Percy 57th out of 66 competitors. As a team we placed 16th out of 29 countries so we did o.k. I reckon. My Newtron worked flawlessly so this is a record for me......no hassles with my equipment. I will write a full report when we get home. One more record Percy at 70 was the oldest competitor in stunt. We will be back home on Tuesday.

Keith & Bokkie