Weekend trip to Manchester

Had a nice weekend in the Manchester area last weekend and visited Ian Masan and Greg Dakin. The idea was to go to Wales and attend the Wales winter league event with Greg. Well the weather did not cooperate so we did something else on Sunday. Monday Ian took me to a trip to North Wales and the Llangollen slope which turned out to be a very, very good slope. Even it was a rather cold day with sunshine the thermal influence was clearly there. But the slope was pretty good just windriven also. I flew my Ultimate and Ian got to test his brand new RaceM F3F and I could tell he was pretty exited.

Many thanks to Ian and Cubbitt's models to get me a very, very needed mitt for my new Futaba 12Z radio. In fact I think I will start to fly in the winter now. I have had big problems in cold conditions before but these days seem to be over now thanks to this excellent product.

Thanks to Ian and Greg for a nice weekend.

Pictures by Ian Mason.

Good weekend in Wales!

Just back from the Welsh Open Eurotour 2007. This an event I have been visiting regularly since 1999 I believe. Last year I did not attend because the Viking Race was so close.
This time I had Bjørn Tore Hagen with me. We flew in to London and Alex McMeekin picked us up and we drove straight to Wales and the Bwlch (yes, try to pronounce that if you can!)
This year it was a 3 day event and 50 competitors showed up. Lots of withdrawals but who cares, the size of 50 pilots is very good.
Friday started out with low clouds and rain and we waited for 3 hours before we managed to get in 1 round at Mickeys slope before the wind turned so much that we could fly anymore.
Next day the forecast was light winds and we could fly on "Back of the Wrecker". This is a fairly good slope and with 5-7 m/s wind we did 4 rounds. I got lucky and pulled out a 37 second flight in round 5. I did not have any bad air so I had fairly good times in all my rounds so far and was the overnight leader. BTH and Alex also did well with 7th. and 4th. place before the last day.
Long before we started the comp. we formed the TGT team and we were all agreeing that this year we should try to make the podium in the team event. This team effort made us all work for the team and trying to avoid mistakes as they would effect not only yourself but also the team. Before the last day we were doing well and was in the lead.
The last the the forecast was good but with much higher wind from the south west. So again back to Mickeys and again waiting for the clouds to lift. Finally it did and we started in 15-20m/s wind. Many people set PB's and fastest time came from Jarda (CZ) flying his Ascot to perfection with a 32,7 second round.
Unfortunately the wind increased and the organizer could nothing else than to stop the flying until the wind came down under the max allowed wind speed of 25m/s. That did not happened so we only got this single round on Sunday. I stayed in the top, Alex moved to 3rd place and BT moved down to 9th place after some bad air in the last round. But the team The Gnome Team stayed in top and won the team competition with a good margin.
Many thanks to the Welsh organizers who did another good event. I hope we all learned a few things when it comes to setting up the safety area. I also hope that the Viking Race committee soon can take a look on the current rules and perhaps make some suggestions in the future rules so organizers can have a manual on how to do it.
Look here for my pictures (not so good as there was something wrong with the camera)
http://picasaweb.google.no/aerotorp/Wales2007
For results take a look at Kevin's web page: http://www.knewt.com/ Also check out RC-Soar's http://www.rc-soar.com/gallery/2007/wo/index.php



Espen

F3F Norwegian Championship

This weekend our club, Forus RC Klubb hosted the Norwegian Championship F3F 2007. 15 pilots entered and we had a pretty strong field of competitors. The weather forecast was rather poor but luckily for us it turned out almost perfect as we got good strong wind from northwest straight into our best slope for F3F. Thanks to Sigve Hodne for letting us using his fields.

We flew 14 rounds on Saturday. Windspeed was from 12-18m/s. Best time of the day was 40.16 seconds set by Bjorn Tore Hagen with Crossfire. Leader of the first day was Rolf Inge Waaga (RaceM F3F) only 19 points ahead of me (RaceM Ultimate, Aris, Ceres) with BTH in third place only 40-50 points behind.

Next day we had 7-9m/s dropping all the day so we managed only 4 rounds. Rolf Inge was still going strong and won 3 of these rounds and earning his first ever Championship! It was well a deserved victory as he made no mistakes and flew very close and short both days for 18 rounds.

I kept my 2nd place and so did Bjorn Tore. In fact the 4 rounds on Sunday did not change any positions. Results and pictures can be found here: http://www.f3x.no/

Also I must thank Jan Eric Klausen and Sigurd Torp for helping us organizing the event.

The slope on Hodne is quite difficult to master and some of the "new" pilots to this slope needs more time to adapt than the locals. The main reason for this is the stone fence on top of the slope + the narrow lift band. We prefer to use the slope mostly because it is very easy to host comps there due to very easy access, car parking and landing facilities. Also there is no doubt that this slope is one of the most equal slopes I have ever been to.

Espen

World Championship F3B

I thought I finally should write a little bit about this years World Championship F3B. This was my first time in Switzerland since a ski holiday in the French part of the Alps (we could ski over to Switzerland). So it was really my first time here. I only regret one thing about the trip..... I should have made it to the top of the Pilatus! Well it only means I have to go back one day. Here you can see what I missed: http://www.pilatus.ch/
I was not really in Switzerland for a holiday anyway. Up at 06.30 every day is not my kind of holiday but F3B is something it is all worth getting up early for. I'll be honest and say it is easier when the results is better than I experienced this time but I have only my self to blame. No training and no preparation this time due to work related stuff was hindering me.
But overall I think I learned a lot and I will certainly not give up this sport. I could also see clearly that many countries had done their homework and came well prepared and their results showed that clearly. Good to see the French guys were doing well, likewise with the Aussies. Also Holland were doing well. The Americans surprised a lot of people grabbing 3rd place.
What I like about the sport is that it brings me around and I would not mind if the USA, Argentina, Japan or some other country would try to host it. I think it is about time that some non European country hosted the World Championship. My advise to any nation wanting to host this is to get an Airline sponsor if possible. This will make it a lot easier for most of the Europeans to accept a bid from overseas. Maybe it could be possible to charter a plane as well. A chartered plane from central Europe would be a very interesting way of doing it.

The contest was dominated by the Germans and especially the Herrig brothers. Martin Herrig only lost about 40 points of maximum and that is remarkable. The conditions were not easy to master and many pilots lost a lot of points in duration and distance. Speed conditions were not super fast as one may expected the last two days when the weather was getting better.

Visitors

When we host international contest I normally get a couple of visitors staying in my flat. And this year I had Ian Mason, Brano Legersky and Jan Tulak coming . Ian came by boat and I met him at the Stavanger Harbour and showed him the way back to my place. But before Ian came I also had to take care of Kjell as his friend Kaare was still in Poland. Kjell came early and was mostly out practicing. I was mostly sick with the flu..... On Thursday I picked up my good friends Brano and Jano from the Airport. Brano did not get to fly much, he was unlucky in the very difficult conditions on Friday and got only to fly one round before the earth came and claimed his Aris. But Brano was here mostly to relax and have some holidays and he took it very nicely. One should think that he could just get another Aris as he and Jano is running the Aerodesign company who makes the Aris. It is not so easy as the orderbooks is pretty packed and customers is waiting. Well I think Brano has one more Aris at home so he will be OK. Sunday Ian left and we went to Rennesoy to fly the contest. After the contest we did some sightseeing and had a small trip around Rennesoy and Mosteroy before a little detour via Stavanger before we visited my family. Next day I had to work and I sent Brano and Jano to the Pulpit Rock. I think they enjoyed it very much. In the evening I took them to the Bore Beach and the outlet of the Figgjo river where we took the pictures. What a nice evening, no wind, waves from the day before and I got to fly my Logostick.

Norway Open F3F

This years Norway Open F3F which also was a part of the Eurotour is over. We had one day with one round and the next day we flew 11 rounds in rather difficult but interesting conditions. The 4 first rounds were flown on the south side of Obrestad. Round one was terrible with low clouds and high winds. Some pilots had problem with this and had some bad luck. Round 2-4 the next day it was even more wind but no rain. The wind was moving towards southwest and we had to change to the southwest slope over at the lighthouse. Here it was much better for a while until it started to shift back to south again! But it was flyable and we decided to stay.

This year we were lucky to have pilots from 6 nations and I think this is a record. The Norwegians were not many so this was very fortunately for us to have so many foreigners.
I think the 17th. of May(Our National day) is the cause of why we had so few Norwegians.
Next year we will avoid this problem I hope.

The contest was won by Rolf B. Rettedal flying an Aris for the first time in contest. Filip Kalensky was 2nd. flying Ascot and New Sting. I managed 3rd place with RaceM Ultimate and Opus. Both Filip and me got unlucky with our A models after round 4. Filip had a hard landing and I had my plane blown out of my hands and dropping it on the tail.....
Filip clearly had problems adjusting to the New Sting and I flew the 190cm Opus almost to perfection and snatched 3rd place 2,5 points ahead of JoJo. (hehe) JoJo flew well and would have taken second place if it was not for his 100 point penalty in round 1. Also Rolf had a 100 point penalty.

We flew 8 rounds on the south west slope in pretty even conditions. Rolf flew very well and we had no chance against him. Landing on this slope is very easy and the contest ran very smooth thanks to our Slovak, Czech and Norwegian helpers.

Results can be found here: www.f3x.no

Sunday we had the scheduled Cooldown (The race after the big one, still official but more relaxed) Rolf and Joergen decided to stay home so it was now down to 7 pilots. Anyway none of us wanted to fly at Obrestad anymore so we went to Rennesoy Island and checked out the South west slope there. SUPER-DUPER conditions! We set up the course and all agreed on flying 8 rounds running 2 and 2 so only 4 landings were needed. 2 pilots backed out because of slightly though landing area. Rolle Rolf had the fastest time of the day with 34,72 seconds and was in the lead all the way up to round 6. I flew very even all day and "stole" 1st. place from Rolle. Arild was struggling with his Aris having servo problems, still enough to take 3rd. spot in front of JoJo and Kjell. Kjell is BTW getting better and better and it want be long before he is on the same level than most pilots here. He won round both in the Norway Open and the Cooldown.
Thanks again to Brano, Jano, Kaare and Tor working the bases and the middle.
Landing was not as tough as we thought, it was very laminar and crow brakes was all you needed to get down safely.

1. Espen Torp, RaceM Ultimate
2. Rolf Inge Waaga, RaceM F3F
3. Arild Moellerhaug, Aris
4. Jo Grini, Crossfire
5. Kjell Gai, Brio

No pics.

Easter F3F Hanstholm, Denmark 2007

This year I decided to enter the Easter F3F in Hanstholm mostly because it was part of the F3F Eurotour for the first time. Over 40 pilots entered and that is close to a record I think. I had to take a quick trip to Hamburg and pick up Tom Copp which decided to go to Denmark instead of La Muela, Spain. The wind direction was west and that meant the Cafeteria slope which is not the best. Building the harbour bigger and bigger has more and more destroyed the slope and makes it very turbulent. But turbulence is one thing, change of wind direction during rounds was another problem that many pilots had problems with.
It would have been very interesting having the weather logger going all day and actually could have seen what was going on. I hope my friend Kaare Aareskjold will have this device ready in not so long time.
Helge Borchert had the new Freestyler 3 and impressed us all with good flying. 3 Czech guys had also taken the long trip and Filip Kalensky (Fastest time of the day) flew his Ascot to 5th place. Kai Henning Nielsen won one round and got 6th place. Tom Copp flew his Caldera and Aris to 7th. place. Good old Klaus Untrieser showed us all that he still is a top contender and ended up in 3rd. I flew my prototype RaceM Ultimate to 2nd place and was quite happy with that. This model is not yet in production and we will test it properly before we decide to produce it. It was quite promising but to early to tell if it is any better or worse than the RaceM F3F.
Top ten list:
Helge Borchert, Freestyler 3
Espen Torp, RaceM Ultimate
Klaus Untrieser, Aris
Knud Hebsgaard, Ellipse 2
Filip Kalensky, Ascot
Kai Henning Nielsen, Elita V
Tom Copp, Aris and Caldera
Jörgen Larsen, Aris
Jan Wichmann,
Frank Wiedemann,

Going outdoors

Last Sunday we had our first F3F competition this year. As can seen on the sea it was not much wind so it was cancelled. Anyway we had a good day out and it was good to meet the guys again. Some of us went to Ole Vidar and had a look at his 1:2,5 Wilga positive. If you ask me this is a crazy project. The size and the amount of details is breathtaking. Ole Vidar has several big projects behind him and one of them can be seen in a big article in the latest Auwind magazine. It is a ca 8meter wingspan Antares.

Arild Moellerhaug giving the Aris of Rolf B. a good launch

Arild with one of his 3 Arises (they all used to be mine)

Wilga positive, Ole Vidar on the left.

The positive is pretty heavy

Karl Petter had a little show with his Schock flyer.

In Slovakia week 9 and 10

A picture of me and the positive for the new RaceM elevator made in aluminium by Jan Hansen.
The progress is a little bit slower than expected due to heavy work load but we hope to start production soon.
I am in Slovakia to help my partner in ET-Air Slovakia with the UAV project. All molds will be ready this week and we can start to make tests.
The weather here has not been so good but that is fine for us as we have to work indoors anyway :-)

Finally we got some better weather and we went to the Airport for some flying.

Very nice Wizard Compact II with Ferrari paint scheme

Miro Polonec with his electric and DLG Logostick

Miro Majercik launching the Logostick

www.et-air.com

New model for Video filming

I have finally made ready the new Videoplane which I intend to use for landscape filming.

Check this link: http://www.et-air.com/index.cfm?id=120883

Apart from this the weather here is not normal with + 6 degrees and rain (well rain is pretty normal). The fields are green and if you did not know better it could be April.

So there has been no chance to test the videoplane with camera yet, but the first flight without equipment went very well.