Eurotour Portugal

I finally decided to attend the F3F Eurotour in Portugal. I made a short detour via Madrid to meet some people in a company making UAV autopilots. Then I got a ride with Alvaro Silgado and his girlfriend Manuela over to Lisbon. The trip took a couple of hours more than normal due to heavy traffic out of Madrid. Alvaro had a new nice Tiguan so the trip was very pleasant.
When we finally arrived in Lisbon my good old friend Jorge (JC) Infante met us and he took me to his new home in Estoril (not far from the famous Estoril F1 Race track). Next day we went to the Santa Iria flying field and several good friends was here already. This was where the Viking Race was held 8 years ago. We had a promising weather forecast with lots of wind. In fact I measured wind speeds over 20 m/s both days. We had 11 rounds the first day and 5 the next day. 24 pilots started and not so many finished all rounds unfortunately. With rather tough landing conditions it was a fight to keep the models ready for the next flight. I had a good lead with almost 400 points before the last day but it was not enough. Franz Demmler (Germany) made use of all the good air he got and beat me with 650 points in 5 rounds! (he had a 100 points penalty also, so in the end he was approx. 160 point in front of me). My conditions was not the best but maybe I got all the good air already in day 1? Inaki Elizondo (Spain) managed 3rd spot. Kjell Gai (Norway)flew really well and took 8th spot with his Pike Brio. I am looking forward to see what he can do with his new Ceres F3F. I flew my RaceM X-tail and a set of Aris wings on a RaceM X fuselage. Both of them working really well. I think the Aris wings on the X-tail fuselage seems to be a very good model. The CG can be brought back and suddenly it can turn much quicker than normal. My RaceM worked well for me as it has all year since I got the X-tail fuse. It is a dream to fly and handling is so easy.
Fastest time of the comp. was Jose Carrion with a 35 second ballistic run!

Pictures http://picasaweb.google.no/aerotorp/Portugal2008

Results:
1 Franz Demmler 12701
2 Espen Torp 12540
3 Iñaki Elizondo 12270
4 Gerardo Lozano 12160
5 José Carrion 12131
6 José Costa 11980
7 André Austen 11974
8 Kjell Gai 11825
9 Álvaro Silgado 11783
10 Andoni Gorriñobeaskoa 11718
11 Pedro Lemos 11477
12 João Faria 11454
13 Claudio Figueiredo 11305
14 Américo Gonçalves 11155
15 Vitor Gandarela 11055
16 João Figueiredo 10867
17 Manuel Costa 10661
18 José Rocha 10567
19 Tomas Norrby 10446
20 João Costa10134
21 Lorenzo Dávila 8585
22 João Mestre 6237
23 Rui Silva 4423
24 Fernando Moro 2293