Local F3F, Hodne

We just hosted a local F3F competition on Sunday the 21st. of June with few pilots but super nice conditions on our local F3F hill, Hodne. The wind came straight in from the North Sea with 8-9 m/s strenght.
Rolf B flew very well with his Aris and won before Arild (Freestyler) and Espen (RaceM/Ceres)
12 rounds was flown.
Thanks to all 7 pilots that showed up and helped organizing the event.
I will try to post some pictures here later.

Results:
1) Rolf Rettedal, 10847
2) Arild Moellerhaug, 10759
3) Espen Torp, 10704
4) Rolf Inge Waaga, 10386
5) Erik Morgan, 9621
6) Richard Pleym, 9024
7) Marius Leirdal, 8458

Espen

Asturia F3F 2009

I decided on a short notice to attend the 2nd. Asturias Open F3F Eurotour in Gijon in the north of Spain. I team up with Tomas Eklund from Malaga and he picked me up in Madrid.


We drove up to Gijon and headed directly to the slope. Several other guys was there already and the wind was pretty strong but a bit cross from the north. Tomas was keen to fly, I was not but it was good for me to observe Pierre Rondel who demonstrated how to deal with the tricky conditions. Tomas flew his Skorpion and I also tested it a little bit.
Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/aerotorp/AsturiasF3FOpen2009Gijon#

Next day we were sort of promised similar weather conditions but that did not happen. The wind was much weaker between 4-8 m/s. I had a bad first round with 77 seconds. Tomas was a little bit happy as he made a 74 second run. But the winner of this round was Sergio with 55 seconds.

For the first time ever I saw an organizer who had a wind and direction meter that actually worked according to the current rules. It can always be debated where to place the unit but in general when placed it is the same for all. As one can see in my last blog post we have made a device that does not use current rules because we believe that measuring an average is more fair way of doing it. More about this later in this post.

There was many Freestylers around and I was interested to test my RaceM against them. I think the conditions was too difficult to actually get a good test but I learned a couple of things. One was that clearly the Freeestylers does not work well in bad conditions either. This was proven in the second and third round were I managed to beat all of them thanks to good conditions and I think some good flying. Both these rounds I flew 59 seconds.

The 3rd round was not finished due to severe wind change after 20 pilots had flown and unfortunately the third round was cancelled after a protest against the weather station, ironic since this was not due to failure over the weather station but more a failure of the current rules (3m/s min and max 45 degree cross wind).

We still had 2 more days to go so it should be possible to manage enough rounds to make the competition. Much was at stake here as the first prize was a Freestyler 3 given by TUD-Modelltechnik.

Two days later we still did not one single round and the competition was cancelled. It also happened last year for the organizer and I feel really sorry for them as they did a lot to make this happen. I really hope they will pull back and try again next year. This is definitive a place I would like to get back to.

I had 3 very nice days mostly because of meeting old friends and meeting new friends but also because the weather was very nice and the place has a lot to offer than just sitting there waiting for wind.

They are expanding the harbor and this alone was worth watching, lots of activity. I also liked the bird mountain close to the lighthouse. I could stand there watching the whole day.

Once again I would like to thank the Asturian club for trying their very best all weekend.

Espen