RSA F3B Blog

2011 Team trials

2012-01-18T17:57:00.000+02:00

A shaky start from a first time blogger, but I hope to master this sooner than later, and that the reactivation of this blog will be a success in the near future.

Being selected together with Nigel Wilkenson to run the F3b soaring, as not the most proficient pilot, seems a daunting task. Yet I hope my passion for this adrenalin and technically challenging discipline, with the help of all the F3b junkies will see me through it. The deep end you might think, well I do! with having a WC this year there seems a lot to be organised and learnt.

Unfortunately this sport is not widely popular in South Africa. If we have 10 active or interested pilots, we consider ourselves lucky, leaving us to scratch for support in terms of helpers. So you can imagine, as a first timer, what we were up against.

The team trials should have been completed by the end of 2010, but I guess we all ran out of time. So we rescheduled to have it over the weekend of the 29/30 January 2011.

The final number of entries were 7, of which only 5 were serious of going to China.

Preparations started a week prior, sorting out score sheets, arranging sights, gazebo's and the all important buzzer system, which Nigel took upon himself to repair. I think he was seriously challenged with the time (very late nights) he afforded himself to sort it out. But in the end the buzzers all worked, and we are very thankful for his efforts.

Although the BERG flying field was selected earlier in the year, we took for granted that the grass needed to be cut. So alas, as we wanted to enter the field on Saturday morning, most of us drove passed the gate, since it has grown nearly completely closed. I was astounded that all the guys proceeded to unpack and set up their equipment. The grass was knee high and difficult to walk through and yet the only comment I got was, "we flew in worse conditions". A sigh of relief for my oversight! Luckily I packed my "panga" which was used to clear the grass around the winches.

The sights and buzzer system were set up, and our self selected ( maybe he was forced to stand in ) CD, Evan Shaw got things going at around 14h00.

My idea was to fly 6 rounds, splitting them up in duration and speed on the Saturday until 18h00, and the rest on Sunday from 9h00 to 12h00, to make it easier for our helpers, so that they only need to assist us on one day. Needless to say, I was informed that this would break the rules! Typical South African!! So we proceeded to break some more (not completing a round with the same plane)! But in the end we flew all 6 rounds with one throw away.

Everybody helped and filled in where it was necessary, for which I was very grateful. Running in the high grass had its tolls. We all suffered from cuts to the shins ( everybody wore long pants and even gum boots the following day), sore bodies ( the overnight rest was welcome) and some suffered severely with hay fever. But in the end everybody present, made it a success.

The scoring was done in the evening with a couple of hick-ups. And this is what transpired over the weekend.

In the following months we will be having practise rounds as preparation for the WC in China. I hope to see more pilots either participating or helping our guys in these events.

27 July 2009

2009-07-28T09:47:00.005+02:00

Practice / final setup continues with the awesome weather. The winches were also calibrated today to ensure that they comply with competition (FAI) standards. With the “new” winch rules, the powerful (and very, Very heavy) batteries will need to be charged after every second launch. We understand that the WC organisers will have a power cable running the length of the flight line for this purpose & using the 20 amp battery chargers this should not take too long, but we will “wait & see”.

The practice day was good, but rather tiring – we (well, "me" in particular ) were still exhausted from the day before, the heat & humidity claiming the rest. Michelle fitted our her spare model & the rest performed lots of launches to assess the winches. Craig & Dion flew a number of distance laps to assist fine setting of the models for altitude/air density. Launch settings, etc. being compared & shared to ensure each model was optimal. The highly controversial finish of the new CL's are creating a definite edge for the distance & speed tasks over the other models, improving even further after applying the tensoids.

We were invited to our hosts house (think “Grand Design meets Ikea”) for a barbecue & some “real” Weis-beer, all overlooking their own massive flying field with lush ankle-high grass. We have reached the conclusion that we are in a flying paradise: walking distance to the flying fields, green grass as far as the eye can see, & great (no, read that as "brilliant") beer. After another busy practice/setup day we closed in for the night, with the intent of flying at 07h00 tomorrow morning for “dead-air” conditions & also allow time for the trip to the famous Red Bull Hanger 9.

Parting comment for the day (from Dion "Denny" Liebenberg): “you can see the planes better in left-hand rather than right-hand thermal turns”.

Parting comment from Tigger: "damb clutch was not were I expected it to be" after parking the van into a bench

Day 1, 26 July 2009

2009-07-27T09:35:00.003+02:00

A good first day.

We started off with the makings of breakfast that our host & Wolfgang had arranged. Suitably fortified & showered, we slowly setoff for the field, the Crig & Wolfgang heading off to “The Workshop” (capitals being important) to finish Michelles’s Ceres Lift wing & other bits. The field itself was within walking distance of our accommodation & we only needed to drive the winches & batteries to it, the rest choosing to walk the short distance in the warm morning air.

At this point we started to see how pretty Austria is; all the fields are clean & green, and there are mountains in the distance in almost every direction you can look. As a Sunday, we were soon joined by some of the local hobby enthusiasts who soon had their electric powered foam models zipping around.

We set to the task of unpacking the boxes & were gratefull for all the hours of manufacture & packing when no damage emerged. Batteries needed to be charged & we slowly setup the winches on loan to us from the local club. They use massive 85A rated batteries coupled through huge welding type cables to their winches. Three of the winches were on wheeled dollies, but still require hefty lifting to remove from the van. Lines were chosen from the selection Wolfgang had had delivered, and spread across the winches. They use a “quick couple” approach for the negative terminal so that the cable can be yanked out in the event of a power lock.

The models were all soon lined up & ready to fly. Wolfgang however notified us that the wind direction was due to swing 180 degrees, so we rolled up the lines & laid them out from the opposite direction. The wind swung again, but from 15h00 onwards it was mostly cross/downwind. Everyone got a good number of launches in, models were trimmed for altitude & we started a few speedruns. Still air conditions were challenging for launch, but thermal activity was strong & widespread.

Dead tired, we left the field at around 19h00 & headed to the chalet for a shower & then out for supper at a local restaurant. The local Weisbeer supplies were dented & then off to bed!

A great first day.

Day Zero - Travel News

2009-07-27T08:12:00.005+02:00

News so far,.....

The trip started off. Well it didn't actually, as our flight was delayed for 12 hours. I was on my way to the airport, about 10 minutes out when the dreaded phonecall came informing me that we would be flyign out at 09h00 the next morning. I turned around & went home for another night with the family. Dion stayed at home, & the Goodrum's booked into a hotel near the airport with all their luggage.

The after hours contact number I was provided the night before was unanswered. However, upon arrival, the departure sign notioned that the flight had been delayed for 24 hours! What! I had to get up at 04h00 to travel all the way to OR Tambo for yet another delay! Waiting until the ticket office opened, we were informed that the flight would indeed be taking off at 09h00. Twits!

We were naturally overweight - but our new chum at the airport, Kingsely, decided that we had been stuffed around enough already & waived the costs! Yes, Karma. Our carefully packed bags & boxes were then lugged off to destinations unknown, undoubtably falling under the intense scrutiny of many eyes. I suspect though that at those wee hours of the morning, the prying hands had better things to do & thankfully our bags were untouched.

Another amazing karmic experience was that the majority of passengers the night before had booked onto alternate flights, so the flight SAA made up for us was empty - about 150 passengers on the Airbus A300'sh (a white one for those more interested in the technical details, Simon). So, once we started into the climb, everybody climbed out of their seats & spread out across the aircraft with 4 seats being used as sleepers etc.

The flight was uneventful after that, the service on SAA was excellent, food good & the leg room, even in economy was a good 20-30 cms more than the Emirates sardine can. The fact that we were able to fly direct to Munich was also a godsend, not having to wait for the connecting flight in some pit of hadesso made the flight infinitely more pleasurable.

The best past was arriving in Munich (hell, the police & customs are friendly) we collected our unopened baggage, nothing to declare (except Denny (Dion) that was stopped at customs - he claims it was due to his Tx case, but we all know the real reason was his somewhat guilty look), out into arrivals & Wolfgangs friendly smile. Of course a quick round of Starbucks was called essential (such a clever marketing ploy - they have their shop next to the exit with the smell of fresh coffee wafting across). The packing of the bus was somewat challenging, but we were soon all squeezed in, radio tuned to "Bayern 3", because Wolfie claims it gives the best traffic reports, & we were soon whizzing down a virtually trafficless highway. The crossing from Germany to Austria was marred only by a frantic scramble for passports - which was not necessary as their was no border control anymore & Wolfie giggled for virtually the rest of the trip to our wooden ski-hut style accommodation in the quaint farming hamlet of Hallwang (approx 5 km's from Salzburg). Everything was unpacked (with a dash of speed), and we shot off to the Hallwang festival for a round of beers & supper.

What a brilliant day.

Regards,
Lionel Brink

F3B World Cahmpionships 2009

2009-03-02T08:04:00.004+02:00

http://www.f3b2009.com/
F3B WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2009

The „RC MODEL KLUB BRNO“, as a member of the Club of Aeromodellers Czech Republic and Association of Modellers of Czech Republic, has the pleasure to invite all members of the FA I to participate in the 17th F3B World Championship.
It will take place on the new Model area in Ivančice near Brno (Czech Republic) from

August 3 – 9, 2009.
Here is the downloadable Bulletin # 1

League #1 ETB

2009-01-29T16:18:00.008+02:00

On Sunday 25 January the first of the F3B Leagues was held at ETB. The previous weekend the HTL was held at ETB and becaues they had had the grass cut it was decided to hold the F3B league there.

The call went out on Monday for entries and by Friday 15 pilots had responded. Craig and Michelle and Myself were available for the morning only due to other commitments, so I decided to make this event into a Speed and Distance clinic.

I was very nice to see some new faces amongst the usual group. It was especially nice to have Jono from Australia. Craig and Michelle lent Jono one of their models and he had some early scary flight with it until he discover that the nose weight was missing completely. Once that had been corrected things got a little easier. Also nice to see some fairly new F3B Pilots, Roberts and Juniors, Steven and Jason. And not to forget Craig (Piglet) Baker back in the frey. Hope to see even more new pilots entering the next F3B League event scheduled for the 15th March.

As always helpers are difficult to find, so I asked that each team provide their own. This however didn't happen. So I arrange three man teams, with one pilot flying, one timing and the other team member was used as the flagman at Base B. As soon as the slot was over the Base B flagmen would go and fetch the chute and one of the other pilots would go down to Base B. This system worked fairly well and we were able to turn each distance slot around in about 15 minutes.

Because of the shortage of helpers and to keep some sort of momentum going it was decided to fly all the distance rounds back to back.

We got off to a very late start, so we only managed 5 full rounds of Distance and 3 rounds of Speed, before we called it a day at around 2;30pm.

Derek has promised to pretty up this article with some photos, so check back in a few days please.

Overall Distance scores below.

Individual Round score below

Speed times below. Robert and Lionel also had to leave early and Jono and Jason elected not to fly. It's interesting to see that Craig Baker was able to put in the second best speed time of 18.5 seconds. Well done! As always, Craig Goodrum was very consistent and fast. Michelle and Dion have some catching up to do! Also of interest is to see guys like Piet & Herman now consistently flying in the mid 20's. It won't be long before they too can clock sub 20 second runs.

F3B World Champs - Ivančice near Brno (Czech Republic) from 3 – 9 August, 2009

2008-12-17T12:53:00.005+02:00

The link to the 2009 F3B world champs is now available;

http://www.f3b2009.com/

Bulitin No. 1 has been posted.

F3B Team Trials - Groengoudt - Nov 2008

2008-11-25T10:34:00.036+02:00

Below are the round by round results of the F3B Team Trials held at Groengoud on the 22 November 2008.

In order to make this event as "man-on-man" as possible and because there were only 8 pilots competing, all pilots flew together in Duration. The Distance task was divided into 2 slots per round with 4 pilots at a time and matrixed into different groups for each round so as to give all pilots as much chance to fly against different combinations of pilots. The Speed task were, as per normal, one after the other.

Round 1 started bang on the advertised time of 08:30 (a first for us F3B pilots. Well done guys and girls). Duration first, then distance, then speed. Then Round 2 started with speed, then distance and then duration and round 3 duration, distance, speed etc. etc. This format worked very well and was very well received.

Congratulation to all the pilots for a very good event and of course all the helpers.

F3B is impossible to run without flagmen and base A timers. I cannot put into words just how grateful I am to those special people that always willingly and selfishly offer their help whenever there is an F3B event. You guys are very special.

THANK YOU ALL.

The Team trial scores are added to the best of the two qualifiers.

Well done to Craig Goodrum, Michelle Goodrum, and Dion Liebenberg who qualify for the 2009 SA National F3B Team. Paul Carnal as first reserve, Herman Weber as second reserve, etc…

A more detailed report can be found on the MGA Blog. http://mgasa.blogspot.com/ with more on the BERG Blog http://www.berg-gliders.blogspot.com/

F3B Qualifier No 2 Pictures

2008-08-24T20:59:00.010+02:00

F3B Qualifier No 2 Results

2008-08-19T08:50:00.005+02:00

On Sunday the 17 August the second of the F3B Qualifiers were held at BERG.
The plan was to start early (Around 08h00) so we could try and get in 6 rounds. Craig and Michelle had set up the speed sights the day before into, what was considered to be the normal wind direction. But as Murphy would have it, Sunday dawned cold and overcast and of course the wind at ninety degrees to the way the sight were set up.
So when everyone had arrived, a brief discussion was held and the vote was taken to reset the sights. With everyone chipping in to help, the sights were dismantled and set up in the right direction.
In the meant time Martie, had the breakfast on the go and after about a 45minutes delay to move the sights and have something to eat we were ready to start.

Because of the stiff breeze blowing straight up the winch lines the launched were good if you didn't blow the line. In fact, broken lines and waiting for teams to get them fixed was the main reason for the slow rotation of slots. Something that will have to be addressed for future comps.

Despite the inclement weather the day produced some surprising lift patterns with some slots having an easy time while others were very challenging.

Speed times were good on average with high launches possible and the stiff breeze helping.

Of the 12 pilots that entered, only 2 didn't make the start and Rodney and Derek suffered equipment failure with their models so they could not complete all the rounds.

In all we managed to squeeze in a total of five rounds, with some juggling of slots which helped to reduce round duration. In fact the last two slots of duration were flown after the sun had set and despite this the pilots were still able to get 10 minutes flights. The last landing was in almost total darkness.

Well done to all the pilots and helpers. Especially the helpers. Without you guy, this type of event will be almost impossible. We salute you!! Thanks a million.

Results and round by round break down below.
If anyone wants a copy of the spread sheet, send me an email and I'll post it to you.

Evan

F3B League - round 1

2008-02-21T10:46:00.007+02:00

Hello All

We held the first round of F3B league on Sunday and despite the small entry I think fun was had by all (I know I did) Evan has worked out the scores (with the handicap etc - think he used a Cray Super computer) and some interesting results emerge.

The Results were as follows:

Pilot Ave Raw Score Handicap End result Rank

Michelle 1854.15 1.0321 1989.61 1

Peter 1621.11 1.1898 1928.84 2

Craig 1913.72 1.0000 1913.72 3

Piet 1587.69 1.2034 1910.55 4

Dion 1580.24 1.0676 1687.05 5

B League
Robert 1600 1.0000 1600 1

(Sorry about the clunky format - I don't seem to be able to generate tables properly - If you need the spreadsheet of results drop me a mail and I will forward it to you)

I would like to than all who helped - Evan for CD'ing - Tony, Gordon, Peter, Edmund and Samantha who sat out in the hot sun, Justice for running lines in the same hot sun and Martie for keeping us fed and watered. Also Derek for providing the photos.

To those that flew - thanks for putting in the effort (even although there was some discussion about using egg timers and/ or calendars for timing the increasingly inaptly named "speed" task!) I hope you enjoyed it and that you will be back next time.
To those who missed out - you missed out! Come and join us next time (remember league every second month)

Round Zero

2007-10-22T05:19:00.000+02:00

F3B League Round Zero kicked off on Sunday 21st October at BERG with 15 A League Pilots and 2 B League Pilots competing.

Of the 15 A League pilots 9 completed the 4 rounds flown. Both the B League pilots managed all 4 rounds.

The event got off to a prompt start at the advertised start time of 09h30. Well done people.

Distance was first, followed by Speed, then speed again followed by distance, etc. Back to back tasks. No Duration tasks only Speed and Distance.

The B League pilots flew in their own slot against each other. So each distance round had 4 slots. This did make things drag on a bit, hence only getting in 4 rounds. On the whole it was a very enjoyable day and a reasonably early finish.

Unfortunately, the attrition rate was high in the first round with Peter Joffe and Wolfgang breaking their models in the opening distance task. Paul and John had a midair with Paul's plane suffering the worst, knocking him out of the comp. John was able to repair the gash in the wing and was able to continue.

The next to break his model was Craig Baker when he dipped to low at the end of the speed run and smote Mother Earth. Knocking him out of the comp.

Michelle, unfortunately had to leave for work commitments, and was only able to complete the first round and the speed task in round 2. Derek was a non starter, because he was unable to get a model ready in time for the event.

It was a great day with the BERG field in superb condition. There was plenty of lift about and the light breeze helped with the launches.

Only the A League pilots get a handicap and only those that completed at least one full round. (Speed and Distance) The pilots average score follows the actual score with the handicap calculated.

This handicap will be used in the next event when calculating the pilots score.

A system will be devised to award handicaps to any pilots joining future events.

Any suggestions will be welcome.

The full round by round scores are also available. Click here.

Below is a quick summary.

A League

--Name ---Score ---Average --- Handicap
1. Craig Goodrum 7833.33 - 1958.33 - 1.0000
2. Dion Liebenberg 7337.38 - 1834.35 - 1.0676
3. Michelle Goodrum 1825.00 - 1825.00 - 1.0731
4. Craig Baker 1807.50 - 1807.50 - 1.0834
5. Tim Joffe 6582.90 - 1645.73 - 1.1900
6. Peter Eagle 6583.62 - 1645.91 - 1.1898
7. Piet Rheeders 6509.57 - 1627.39 - 1.2034
8. Alan Smith 6135.27 - 1533.82 - 1.2768
9. Evan Shaw 6097.87 - 1524.47 - 1.2846
10. John Monk 6015.31 - 1503.83 - 1.3022
11. Herman Weber 5771.00 - 1442.75 - 1.3574

12. Paul Carnall 727.27
13. Wolfgang Steffny 600.00
14. Peter Joffe 400.00
15. Derek Marusich 0.00

B League
1. Rudi King 6941.18
2. Len Thomas 6164.00

F3B League

2007-10-18T14:52:00.000+02:00

Hi All interested F3B pilots

Herewith the long awaited rules for the competitions.

We will mostly fly distance and speed (tasks B & C) of the FAI F3B Discipline but this is up to the individual organisers discretion. Obviously all team selection events will be full F3B competitions.

To recap - task B - Distance

Working time seven (7) minutes. Pilots may only score laps during working time. Pilots have four (4) minutes from entering the course to fly as many legs of the 150M course as possible. Pilots may relaunch at any time during working time but the last attempt is the one that counts. The aircraft will be identified to the base B buzzers prior to launch and these same base B buzzers will indicate when the aircraft passes base B and it can be turned. The pilots team is responsible for base A and for counting laps and elapsed time in the course.

Task C (Speed)

Working time four (4) minutes to launch and gain height as necessary to enter the course. The pilot may relaunch at any time BEFORE entering the course. Once the pilot has entered the course they must fly four (4) 150M legs of the course as quickly as possible. Timers at base A will be provided by the organisers but the pilot is responsible for getting a caller to call the turns for them. The organisers/ timers will indicate when the aircraft has passed "OUT" of the course and can be turned to commence the run. They will also indicate when the plane enters the course (IN). The aircraft must complete the entire run on the opposite side of the course from where timers and others are situated and crossing the centre safety line will result in a zero score.

For "A" league pilots the FAI rule requiring the completion of an entire round (Tasks B & C) with a single aircraft will be enforced. For "B" league pilots this will not.

Round o - as will take place on Sunday is to establish a baseline for handicapping the "A" league pilots. The handicap will be worked out so as to provide all pilots with an equal chance of winning the event. The handicaps will be revised after every competition to take into account improvements in pilot performance. This will also allow pilots to join the league after round 0 but their 1st competition will then be as a "scratch" handicap and any benefit they derive will be from the following competition onwards. This is so as to not disadvantage pilots who fly round 0.

Promotion and relegation to and from the various leagues will be based on annual performance except where exceptional performance in consecutive events is observed and will be used to move those pilots between leagues. This will be up to the discretion of the organisers of the league

There will be prizes for both leagues - I have decided to sponsor 1/2 of a building group slot for the winner of the "B" league and Evan very kindly said he would do the other 1/2. For the "A" league pilots some sponsorship is still being sought but the thinking is that a worthwhile prize will be awarded as it is based on the years performance.

As always we welcome any comments and feedback on this as the purpose of the league to to foster pilot development.

PeterP

Practice for F3B League

2007-10-08T11:58:00.000+02:00

A reminder to all that there will be an F3B League practice day at BERG on Sunday 14th October.

This is also a great opportunity for all aspirant B League pilots to come and get advice and set-up tips form the A league pilots. Remember that this is for anyone with an F3B glider that would like to try his hand at F3B. The emphasis will be on Speed and Distance tasks. We all get enough Thermal practices. Experienced F3B pilots will be able to help and guide you through how F3B speed and distance task should be flown.

Here is Trevor and Evan with their new Shongololo's, that were maidened last weekend.

There should be 5 new Shongololo's from the building group there, some for their maiden flights.

Peter will be posting rules etc for the league shortly, so watch this space.

Preparing for F3B League - Round Zero - 21st October

2007-09-17T10:59:00.000+02:00

With only 5 weeks to go before round Zero of the F3B League it is time to start getting ready.
The event will take place at BERG on the 21st October. On the MGA calendar, this date was scheduled to be an F3J event, but has now been reallocated to F3B. The date for the F3J will be advised. More details will follow shortly.

I finally managed to get a gap in the Shongololo Building Group to make a plane for myself.

On Wednesday evening Robert, Trevor and Wesley helped me get the wing skins done and into the bags. On Thursday evening I layed up the first layers for the fuselage. Friday evening I joined the wings. Saturday afternoon I joined the fuselage and did the stab skins.

Sunday evening everything came out of the molds. I have to rush all this as I need to prepare the molds for Rudi plane, which we start on Wednesday.

Despite the rush everything came out perfectly and she is looking stunning. I still have quite a lot to do. Tonight I join the stabs, lay up the canopy and servo tray and if time permits, I'll do the joiner as well.

Dancing in the rain....

2007-08-29T08:47:00.001+02:00

A series of photos from the recent F3B World Champs in Switzerland.... The story of Michelle's Speed triple relaunch... Enjoy!

Composite F3B Glider Building group

2007-08-25T09:56:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of 2007 I started a building group at my house on the West Rand to provide people with the opportunity to build the all composite F3B Shongololo Glider. (Designed by Craig Goodrum.) The response has been overwhelming with places booked into next year already. It seems that there is a big demand for F3B gliders.
Because imported model are expensive, with the cheapest being around R6000.00, many people that would like an F3B model simple cannot afford them. So having the opportunity to build your own at R2500.00 is very attractive. The Shongololo is a very good design, with lovely lines and smooth flying characteristics. Although the wing profile isn't as thin as the modern F3B gliders of today it is still competitive enough to use in the F3B League that will be running next year. (You can read more about this in earlier post on this Blog)

There is nothing new about building groups. This article is just to provide you with an idea of how it works. Basically there are 4 people involved, 3 working for 10 consecutive sessions, plus myself making up the 4th person. Four people building, is essential, as each will work on one wing panel. This facilitates a quick turnaround and because of it a model can be completed every 3rd week. The group meets once a week in the evenings from 18h00 until around 22h00 (4 hours). Sometimes this does extend depending on what we are busy with or how much fun we are having at the time. There have been evenings when I get into bed after midnight.
Each model takes only three sessions to complete and by the forth, everything is done and the persons whose model it is can take his components and bid us farewell so we can start the next model. There is an overlap on the 4th evening. Sounds complicated, but it isn't really! See table below.

When someone joins the group he will first be helping to build two other peoples models while gaining experience in the techniques of composite building. Because we build the wings first they are ready for de-molding by the third session. This gives me a week to clean up the molds and prepare them for the following session. There is some homework to be done before a person can start his model. The wing skins are a sandwich construction and the Herrex used in this has to be cut and sanded at home by the person whose model will be built. Templates and instruction are provided. Each session is divided into different tasks as per below.

Week 1 - Lay up wing skins & bag them. Make joiner box.
Week 2 - Lay up the first layers of the Fuselage. Join wings. Lay up stab skins & bag them.
Week 3 - Lay up carbon tows and joining layer of fuselage. Insert sheer web and joiner tubes and join the stab. Lay up canopy, servo tray & make wing joiner. Join fuselage. De-mould wing.
Week 4 & 1 - De-mould Fuselage, Stabilizer, Canopy, Servo Tray and Wing Joiner. Start new model. See 1 above.

This building group was started on the 14 February 2007 and in 6 months we have been able to produced 8 Shongololo’s.
The evenings are very relaxed and those that have built models so far have enjoyed the experience tremendously. All report that the 10 weeks goes by very quickly and they come away with a new understanding and experience on how to build composite models, plus of course, there very own model which they have built with their own hands. This, on its own gives one a great sense of achievement. Not only do you own a lovely model, but you have made it yourself!
To help, I also offer assistance on Saturdays with the little fiddly bits, like the hinging, servo mounting, wiring etc. Basically fitting out of the model and getting it ready to fly.

Below is the photo gallery of the models that have been produced in this building group to date.

01 Tony

02 Hannes

03 Gordon

04 Heinrich

05 Henk

06 Mark

07 Robert

08 Len

As mentioned earlier, the cost per glider is around R2500.00 each. This model is ideal for someone entering into F3B for the first time. Strong and robust and at a price that is unbeatable. If you’re not interested in F3B or competitive flying, it’s also a great general purpose thermal glider, with clean crisp responses and yet docile enough for anyone wanting a full house modern glider to just enjoy on a Sunday’s social flying.

The wing lay-up is a Hybrid, Carbon/Kevlar skin as can be seen in the photo on the left, where the wing is painted with a clear coat so the hybrid cloth is visible underneath. (Click on the image to get the bigger picture) The dark strip is the carbon spar-cap. Made up of 50 x 12K carbon tows. The hinges for the flaps and ailerons are live. In other words the Kevlar strands in the skin lay-up acts as the hinge.

The fuselage is Glass and Kevlar with Carbon reinforcing. This model has a cruciform tail with all flying stabilizer. The aluminum joiner tube is built into the stabilizer when the molds are closed. The fuselage is one piece with a canopy and a carbon servo tray is provided as well as carbon end ribs. The wing joiner is a hollow core unidirectional rectangle carbon rod.

Because of the way the group is structure, anyone can build one of these fancy composite models. You don’t need any special skills as there is plenty of help and guidance during the building process. All the specialized equipment and materials are provided for you. All you do is come and build.

So if you would like a Shongololo and you would like to get involved with the building of your very own F3B glider, please contact me on 083 254 1809 or email me at evanevshaw@gmail.com . Book your place today.
Evan Shaw.

F3B 2007 Feedback Part 3

2007-08-07T17:17:00.000+02:00

In closing here are some pics of the team during the trip. I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed the contest.
Craig

Ahh, F3B - what a life!

Smiley eyes!

Wolfgang's driving, I need my bottle.

Dion, Michelle, Wolfy and Mat outside the Redbull hanger

Dion, getting in touch with the colour PINK.

HLG's stacked like this just don't give you the same feeling! Brings new meaning to the term "nice rack!"

A tunnel, there are a few of these in Switzerland.

Quick, the sun's shining, looks like they are having a good holiday, note the gummi boots in the background.

Hmmm, mud..... Doesn't Rodney look good with his umbrella though?

Even the mud monster came out to dry off when the sun came out.

2007 F3B Report Back Part 2

2007-08-05T19:56:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the delay in getting this into the blog, my blogging abilities appear to be somewhat limited and the time to understand what I was doing wrong was not available. Part 3 will be a bunch of Photos with comments as taken from Michelle's camera.

Round 2

The mud was deeper and it was colder (“I wish I had visited the shops back home like Michelle asked”), it was no longer possible to get by with bare feet or just accepting dirty shoes, Wolfy went to market to get us “gummi boots”. Thank goodness for the two young helpers Wolfgang organized from Salzburg (George and Mouritz), they ran out new lines and carted the batteries back and forward from the flightline, not an easy job in ankle deep mud.

Duration
The air was easier for Dion and I so we maxed without too much incident, my model was not well set up for landing and the elevator compensation was such that when going fast it pitched hard down and when slow it pitched up – a real handful that I really must spend some time fixing now that we are home (this is one of the problems with flying an unknown model). Michelle’s group had really bad air and I think she came second with a 6:46.

Distance
For the most part I would say that the comment for distance was the same as round 1 for Dion but for Michelle I think it was a case of bad air and bad choices, I remember that she flew the laps in big sink, for me it was a line break followed by flying off the line in cross wind launch (not having a good model setup, hmmm).

Speed – ok – we needed to anticipate Base B and improve our launch.

During distance Dion received a penalty which caused some distress and affected his flying.

Round 3

This time I got the lousy duration air but I wasn’t close to the top of my group. The only thing to write home about was that our speeds seemed better than in previous worlds. Distance was not great!

Round 4

And what do you know. The organisers had managed to get some straw onto the field, the rain had abated and the South Africans came out to play F3B. This round was much better for us with all three of us moving up the table.

Duration
Around this time I added a 2 frank coin to get more stable for Distance and duration, this improved the feel and made turns better! My air was easy but then a big storm hit in last 30 seconds and I was lucky to put glider down within 10m circle with my timing flying right out the window. (precious points lost). Michelle had a really difficult flight and too much concentration led to lack of down elevator input on landing, she flew over the spot, I think she wanted to see how high I could jump, little did she know I had turned and run!

Two Thousands in Distance!!
Our Speeds were pretty average.

Round 5

Michelle put in another excellent round with the best SA speed and distance.
Ceres works well in good F3B conditions, Duration is more of a challenge for the model but it is a nice aggressive tool to fly with.

Round 6

Dion asked for a little thermal, so that was what we found him. One guy in the round went across the runway and managed to find a good thermal, a lot of the rest of us came short on time. Dion was not happy about duration at this point. The rest of the results were badly scattered with average speed times and Michelle being killed in distance. There wasn’t really anything we could do to help her with this distance, Jeroen launched late and went to the opposite (hangar) side of the field. As Michelle had already relaunched there was no time to go again and 3 laps in the sink made it impossible to cros over the field to the OK air on the other side. The problem here is that you know you are doing damage control but as it was not possible to land on the hangar side f the field Michelle would not be able to get to that side and do any laps before having to return. This was the worst flight for me to call air for in distance as there was nothing anyone could do but watch as the group took a pounding. Michelle had beaten Jeroen in the round where she scored a 1000, when he takes his revenge he does it seriously.

Round 7

Easy Duration, lots of lift around and Dion was given a Beeg thermal.

I think my speed slot at end of lift cycle, the time compared well with those to follow.
Michelle received a standing ovation from those that witnessed her speed – it was flown with as much style as anything I saw from the Herrigs, good one Shell!

Distance
Dion – took too long to move to good air side and was low on entering, possible correction is launch height improvement, speed of getting out of bad air and direction of the zoom. I did not listen to callers but the reasoning was that I had air and was trying for a win not a good score and flying back to the close air would have cost altitude (no time for a relaunch). The balance between flying what you feel and forcing yourself to do what others say is not easy.

That was the end! Actually it wasn’t quite – now it was time to pack up the models and clean all the mud off the equipment that had been borrowed.

Thanks to all who wished us well and assisted us on the journey, there are really too many to mention by name and not bore PJ,

F3B - the optimization of different flying states

2007-08-04T08:43:00.000+02:00

Below Follows a report extracted from the Modell Flugsport 3/2007 magazine. Quite long, but well worth the read!

Reproduced here with kind permission from Reto Fiolka reto_fiolka@yahoo.com the original author:

What Is F3B?
F3B is an FAI competition class for remote controlled (RC) sailplanes that covers the full bandwidth of performance radio control gliding. The three tasks, thermal duration, distance flight and speed flight pose contradictory requirements on the pilots and models, because one has to perform all these tasks with the same model. Effectively there is even a fourth task, namely the launch at the winch. The launch is the beginning of every task and a perfect winch launch is absolutely mandatory in F3B: “Launching is everything” (quote by Tobias Knoblauch!)
These four tasks require the optimization of completely different flying states: flying with maximum lift during launching, with minimal sink in thermal duration, with the best gliding ratio in the distance task and with minimal drag in the speed task.
Beside the flying skills of the pilot and the performance of the plane, the weather also plays an important role in F3B as thermal activity can sometimes change quite quickly. To avoid “weather luck” in an F3B competition, the thermal duration and distance tasks are flown in groups (typically up to 12 pilots in thermal duration, up to 6 in the distance task). The best pilot of each group scores 1000 points, the others proportionally less. Therefore the influence of the weather can be compensated; the winner is the pilot who can most successfully handle the current conditions.
In contrast, the pilots have to fly one after the other in the speed task and the pilot with the fastest time scores 1000 points. Of course, the weather conditions can strongly influence the speed performance; therefore each pilot has a working time of 4 minutes in which the speed flight has to be accomplished. Thus an experienced competition pilot can choose - within some limits - the best moment to start. Only if the weather changes drastically (e.g. when it suddenly starts to rain), can the organizer split the speed task into smaller groups.

What Is the Challenge?
The reader might ask himself what is so special about these rather simple tasks in an F3B competition. Nearly every modeler has experienced successful thermal flights, all the F3B ships feature superb gliding ratios and flying fast with them is a piece of cake anyway, so what is so difficult about F3B?
Well, when there is good thermal activity, the duration task is not that difficult, but what about difficult conditions, extremely poor air, turbulent wind or just really bad weather? It would be very naive to hope that in such conditions the other pilots will also not be able to fly the 10 minutes, because at least one pilot in each group will somehow manage to fly the full time.
Furthermore, let's assume that the models in the distance task have exactly the same gliding ratio (although flying a plane at the best gliding ratio requires a skilled pilot and good settings) and the weather conditions are constant (e.g. calm air in the evening). Despite the equal conditions, a beginner in F3B would normally not score the 1000 points. This can be very disappointing, because one cannot directly see what went wrong, either the launch height was not good enough, the turns were not optimal or something else was not perfect.
But the distance task is even more challenging, because the weather conditions are mostly not at all constant, thermal bubbles rise in some locations, but a little later there is only poor air left. Therefore the distance task is a four-dimensional optimization problem, because it matters where and when one starts the flight. Furthermore, it is allowed to land and launch the plane again if a pilot realizes that he is flying in the wrong location.
Because there are so many possibilities, a pilot alone could not fly an optimal distance task by himself - he would for example not notice that other pilots have found good thermal activity. Therefore team work is required in this task and the pilots advised by up to three helpers. Their job is to observe the other pilots, indicate the flying speed and to announce the turns at either end of the course. All in all, the distance flight is a very tactical task that, beside optimal control of the plane, requires a lot of experience from the pilot and the helpers.
But the speed task must be easy, F3B planes are fast anyway and we fly crisp speed turns each weekend at the slope, right?
Well flying an optimal speed turn is a different story, because the plane should conserve most of the kinetic energy, but flying this turn exactly at the end of the course, that is the real problem! Each meter the plane flies too far is doubled, because one also has to fly this extra distance in the opposite direction. On the other hand, if a pilot turns too early, no signal will sound and he has to fly back again, which costs a lot of speed and time.
Additionally, the speed task is often the most important task to separate the top pilots. So imagine the following situation: The last speed task is run in an inverted sequence (the best pilots start last) and the pilot that flies before you achieves an excellent speed flight.
Now you know that you have to perform equally or even better to keep your position in the final ranking. And the pressure increases the nearer you are to the top pilots - at the 2005 World Championships the very last speed flight decided who became world champion!
Beside that, the speed task is very spectacular because the planes fly at very high velocities (up to 160 km/h), so don't make mistakes in this task; otherwise you have to pick up your plane in very small pieces!

And Why Should One Do That?
So far we have learned that F3B requires a lot of training, is extremely challenging and is also not very cheap. So why are there people doing F3B?!
F3B is the challenge and the fascination of flying against pilots from all over the world and of raising the limits higher and higher. Subjective impressions about personal flying skills are replaced by solid facts, because individual performances in the F3B tasks can be quantified exactly.
When one flies alone, one can never tell if the flying performance was good or bad, because one has no reference. In an F3B competition, one gets a direct feedback - either you have the 1000 points or the other pilots were better than you!
Of course this can be very disappointing in the beginning, but when you score the 1000 points for the first time, it is a rush! And you can share your joy with your team mates, because F3B is a team sport and you won't make it to the top alone.
Colleagues and friendship are also an integral part of the F3B scene, because it sometimes requires extreme situations to find really good friends! A lot of good friendships, collaborations and networks have been developed in the history of F3B and that should not be underestimated.
Furthermore F3B helps you to increase your flying skills because you learn from the best. Being able to find the right settings for a model, to read the air and to fly precisely will payoff quickly because all of a sudden you will fly longer and get more performance out of your sailplane.

Thermal Duration
The competitor has to fly for exactly ten minutes, and has to land exactly in the centre of a circle with 15 meters radius. This task is similar to F3J, but there are some differences: In F3B the pilots have a working time of 12 minutes, so there is no need for risky simultaneous starts and landings as in the F3J class. Furthermore, F3B planes achieve such excellent launch heights that they can effectively just soar the 10 minutes in calm air. Nevertheless, this task can be extremely exciting in bad weather, because 10 minutes can then become very long...

Distance-Task
The pilot has 4 minutes in which to fly as many legs as possible of a 150 meter course. The working time for this task is seven minutes and there is the possibility to restart the plane if needed. The world record in this task is 34 legs, nevertheless in bad weather conditions sometimes 11 legs can be enough for 1000 points.

Speed-Task
In a working time of 4 minutes the pilots have to effectuate a speed flight of 4 legs, each leg having a length of 150 m. There is the possibility to restart the plane within the working time.
The world record is 13, 8 seconds which corresponds to an average velocity of 156 km/h.

The Optical Reference
To check that the models fly the correct distance in the distance and speed tasks, an optical reference system is placed at each end of the course: Two wires are arranged so that they span the corresponding turnaround plane. By focusing over the two wires, helpers can determine optically when a plane arrives at the end of the course and at that moment they press a buzzer.

The Winch launch
In F3B the planes are launched using an electric winch with a turnaround pulley. The power of the winch is limited and the overall length of the launching line (typically a nylon line with a diameter of 0, 8 - 1, 4 mm) has to be 400 m. The diameter of the nylon line is not limited and can be optimized for weather conditions. The tremendous launch heights that can be achieved with modern F3B planes originate from the enormous lift the planes can generate during the first phase of the launch. This places severe strain on the nylon line and it is stretched, so that at the summit of the launch, the plane can be accelerated by the winch and the nylon line itself.
After catapulting the plane off the line, the plane can rise nearly vertically by an additional 100 meters. Therefore launch heights of 350 m are possible in ideal launching conditions.

The F3B Plane

Technical Requirements
An F3B plane has to fulfill contradictory and extreme aerodynamic and static requirements: When the plane is being launched it is first in a high lift regime, at the summit it is instantaneously accelerated to approx 180 km/h, then it is pulled violently off the line to rise by an additional 100 meters. This causes the airframe to be subjected to enormous g-forces, and it should furthermore feature exceptional stiffness in order to convert the kinetic energy efficiently into altitude (and not into deformations!).
The following flying tasks require optimal performance in a wide velocity range (9 m/s in thermal duration, up to 60 m/s in the speed task), so a wide range of Reynolds numbers have to be considered in the airfoil and plane design. The contradictory requirements need a lot of compromises, a plane that is only optimized for one task would have no chance in a competition.

History of F3B Plane Development
In the last 30 years F3B planes have changed a lot, new construction technologies (molding, glass fiber and carbon fiber reinforced plastic, GRP and CFRP) and better aerodynamic knowledge (computer based airfoil design) have revolutionized the scene.
The first planes were only controlled by elevator, rudder and spoilers and the wings were constructed with ribs or sometimes in sandwich technology. But at the end of the seventies the first all-molded GRP planes appeared with this technology, one could reproducibly manufacture the planes with high precision. Carbon fibers soon enabled significantly stiffer airframes and a further reduction of the all-up weight. In the mid eighties Rolf Girsberger developed the RG 15 airfoil which was an aerodynamic breakthrough. Finally an airfoil was available that combined good speed performance with sufficient lift for the launch and thermal duration. Several World Championships were won using the RG 15 airfoil and the first commercial F3B planes also employed this airfoil (e.g. with the Ellipse 1 or the V-Ultra plus).
With the arrival of the commercial version of the Ellipse 1 in the early nineties, a competitive plane was available to everyone for the first time. Up to now, the market for F3B planes has continuously grown, but nevertheless there are still a lot of teams that very successfully develop their own planes, like the LOGO team or the Herrig brothers.
In the mid-nineties high-lift airfoils like the MH 32 were introduced into the F3B scene. These airfoils enabled stunning launch heights by optimization of the maximum lift. The slightly reduced speed performance was overcompensated by high wing loading and exceptional launch heights. Due to this development, the duration task was increased to 10 minutes, because the new planes could fly out the seven minutes too easily.
Today, the models are again optimized for the speed task and very thin airfoils have been developed. High aspect ratios are used to guarantee good launch performance and new ultra-high-modulus carbon fibers enable even stiffer airframes.

So Is It Only a Question of Money...?
One could draw the conclusion that today one could win a competition by investing the most money to have the best F3B plane. Fortunately this is not true, because the most important factor remains the pilot, “The best plane of the world is no use at all, if you fly in the wrong place” (quoted from Paul Bohlen!)
Of course, the planes are continuously developed further and there is always competition among the various engineers to design the best model. Nevertheless progress only happens in small steps and the “miracle airfoil” that beats all others by orders of magnitude does not exist.
So a normal modeler might be very disappointed if he buys the latest F3B ship and finds out later that it does not fly significantly better than, for example, an Ellipse 2. If one does not fly F3B competitions, the small gains in performance might be not that obvious.
The story is the same with the tailplanes: In the nineties the V-tail was successfully introduced in the F3B scene and it became the de facto standard. But at the end of the nineties more and more planes with a cross-tail were used in F3B and they were praised just like the V-tail was some years before. Today the trend is more towards the V-tail again. Apparently, it is more a personal question which tail type a pilot favors; therefore many manufacturers sell their models in a cross-tail and a V-tail version.
So the key to success in F3B is finding the right settings for the competition plane and extensive training. State-of-the-art F3B technology is available to everyone and it is not possible to just invest more money to have an advantage over the other competitors. This is important; one should just consider the development in other classes like F5B, where some pilots use new batteries for each flight to have a superior performance.
Off course the F3B equipment is not cheap, but you can use the planes for several years in competition. When the plane is no longer competitive (most times it is more the pilot and not the plane), one can use the plane for normal flying outside the competition. Because F3B planes are very durable and have an excellent performance, they are great fun on the slope.

State-of the-Art F3B Planes
Although the myth of the superior model was disproved in the previous chapter, some of today's successful F3B planes should be mentioned: Estrella, Diavolo, Europhia, Supersonic EX/R, Crossfire, Tool, Tresher, Ceres and Radical.
The Diavolo is the successor of the famous and widely used Estrella. It is a new design and features a relatively short tail boom, single dihedral and a thin airfoil.
A world champion model, the Crossfire is used by many pilots because of its exceptional launching and speed capabilities. A V-tail version is now also available to decrease the all-up weight of the plane. The designers of the Crossfire have already engineered a new plane, the Tool. This plane also features a very thin airfoil, is rather compact and employs a V-tail as well.
The Logo team's Tresher (successor of the famous Woebegone) and the Radical developed by the Herrig brothers and Martin Weberschock are fully competitive designs, the latter is even considered as one of the best F3B planes at the moment. Both planes are optimized for the speed and the distance task.

History of F3B
The first FAI sporting code for the F3B class appeared 1973. Essentially it described various kinds of RC sailplane competitions, namely for slope soaring, powered gliders and winch-launched gliders. For the latter, a duration task of six minutes, a distance task limited to twelve legs and a speed task consisting of two legs were described and this kind of competition soon became very popular.

F3B World Championships - Hall of Fame
Year - Country and Place - 1st - 2nd - 3rd
1977 RSA- Pretoria - Skip Miller (USA) Fricki Roos (RSA) Sean Bannister (GRB)
1979 BEL- Amay - Anton Wackarie (AUT) Ralf Decker (GER) Roy Spavins (RSA)
1981 USA- Sacramento - Dwight Holley (USA) Sean Bannister (GBR) Schaefer (GER)
1983 GBR- York - Ralf Decker (GER) Helmut Quabeck (GER) David Worall (GBR)
1985 AUS- Waikerie - Ralf Decker (GER) David Worall (GBR) Karl Wasner (AUT)
1987 GER- Osnabruck - Reinhard Liese (GER) Peter Hoffmann (AUT) Samuele Vilani (ITA)
1989 FRA- Melun - Nic Wright (GBR) Peter Hoffmann (AUT) Joris ten Holt (NED)
1991 NED- Terlet - Joe Wurts (USA) Daryl Perkins (USA) Stephen Haley (GBR)
1993 ISR- Kefar Sava - Denis Duchesne (BEL) Joe Wurts (USA) Klaus Kowalski (GER)
1995 ROM- Brasov - Daryl Perkins (USA) Denis Duchesne (BEL) Joe Wurts (USA)
1997 TUR- Ankara - Daryl Perkins (USA) Pasi Vaisanen (SWE) Joakim Stahl (SWE)
1999 RSA- Rustenberg - Daryl Perkins (USA) Dieter Perlick (GER) Roland Hofmann (SUI)
2001 CZE- Chrudim - Daryl Perkins (USA) Joe Wurts (USA) Stefan Knechtie (SUI)
2003 GER- Kirchheim/Teck - Andreas Bohlen (SUI) Pasi Vaisanen (SWE) Reinard Liese (GER)
2005 FIN- Lappeenranta - Andreas Bohlen (SUI) Martin Herrig (GER) Reinard Liese (GER)
2007 SWE- Emmen - Martin Herrig (GER) Andreas Herrig (GER) Fidel Frick (LIE)

Thirty years ago, the first F3B World Championships were held in Pretoria, South Africa. Most of the planes at that time were only controlled by rudder and elevator and had rib or sandwich wings. The Swiss team, for example, used a Brillant V and a Hobie Hawk. Today it is unbelievable how one could fly the speed task with such planes!
Two years later at the World Championships in Amay, Belgium, the models had evolved remarkably. The first all-molded F3B planes were introduced by the Austrian AME team, the Germans Ralph Decker, Dieter Pfefferkorn and the Italian Eugenio Pagliano. The AME team dominated the World Championships with their Dassel owing to its superior speed performance, rigorous training and a solid team performance. If one compares the models of the world champions from 1977 (Skip Miller) and from 1979 (Anton Wackerle) one can obviously see the tremendous progress within just two years!
This early success was the breakthrough for molding technology and accelerated the development of new models. The next step was the use of electric winches for launching, because one could gain superior heights in the zoom.
At the World Championships in Sacramento, USA, most competitors used electric winches. But there were no limitations for the winch, therefore they became more and more powerful. The most powerful winches had 4,5 kW of power and they catapulted the planes violently into the air. One could also install the winches freely on the competition field, so some clever pilots catapulted the planes directly into the speed course. The Canadian team used extremely powerful winches that were run at 36 Volts (also known as Gorilla winches) just to accelerate the planes. Due to the enormous forces, it could happen that a turnaround pulley was ripped out of the ground or that planes were destroyed during launching.
As this became more and more dangerous, the FAI had to limit the power of the winches by rule. The first idea was the so-called weak link, an element (typically a piece of nylon line) that would break if the line tension exceeded 40 kg. In 1989 it was decided to limit the internal resistance of the winch and the battery, a procedure that has lasted till now.
Despite this power limitation, the performance in the three tasks increased from year to year and the rules had to be adapted to this development: In 1983 the speed task was increased to four legs and in 1987 an unlimited number of legs was introduced in the distance task.
As the launch heights also became higher and higher, the duration task was adapted to seven minutes in 1993. With the introduction of high-lift airfoils in the mid-nineties, the launch height could again be significantly increased, consequently the flight time in the duration task was increased to 10 minutes in 2001.
Although the progress in F3B happens in small steps, over decades, the development is quite amazing. Today's F3B planes achieve around 250-350 meters launch height, a value that is better than the height obtained with a “Gorilla” winch, which had 4 times more power!
F3B is the Formula 1 of model flying, because progress results from the competition situation. In thirty years, F3B has brought a lot of new technologies and normal modelers also benefit from this development, as better airfoils and excellent models become available.

Memories of the RG 15 Airfoil Development
The RG 15 airfoil is one of the most successful RC sailplane airfoils - for more than a decade it was the de facto standard in F3B, it was also widely used in F3J and even today it is used for fast slope soarers. But most people don't know its designer, Rolf Girsberger.
At the end of the seventies, Girsberger and colleagues decided to design their own F3B planes. Girsberger studied turbo machinery at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and he has good knowledge of fluid dynamics. He realized that the available Eppler airfoils were not optimally suited for the speed task in F3B. So he decided to develop his own airfoil that would perform better in the speed task but would also have enough lift for launching and thermal flying.
From scientific publications he realized that a computer program developed by Professor Eppler, was very promising for the airfoil design. The program calculated the airfoil via a conformal transformation to predesign the behavior at different angles of attack, a procedure that is known today as inverted airfoil design. The performance of the resulting airfoil was then verified by performing flow simulations using a boundary layer model and a panel procedure code.
Girsberger wrote to Eppler, who was working in the States at that time, asking if he could have the program. But Eppler was unable to send him the code, because of a strict US policy to prevent the export of know-how.
Fortunately Girsberger found a NASA Technical Report in the ETH library that had Eppler's code published in the appendix. So he decided to copy this code and implement a new programe. The technical report was copied several times, so there were finally a lot of bugs in Girsberger's code.
Therefore Girsberger was forced to understand the code down to the smallest subroutine in order to debug it. At the end, this paid off because Girsberger understood what was happening in the code and how the input parameters influenced the calculations. Finally, the code compiled and ran successfully, so Girsberger could start his airfoil calculations and he iteratively optimized his designs.
One has to imagine that the computers at that time were completely different from today's PC - they were programmed with punch cards and the results could not be directly visualized on a screen! So iterative optimization was a very tedious and costly task at that time!
The first successful result was the RG 8 and club mates quickly constructed a test model, that performed as predicted in the high-lift regime, but the speed performance was worse than predicted.
From this experience, Girsberger designed the RG 12 and the RG 14 which he considered as the most promising airfoil for F3B. Additionally he designed a more conservative airfoil as he had realized that a computationally over-optimized airfoil can lack performance in reality. This airfoil was the RG 15 and he published the results in 1983 for the first time.
Some top F3B pilots were interested in Girsberger Airfoils, among them Ruedi Binkert, who was designing the new plane named Quasar. To Girsberger's surprise they decided to try the rather conservative RG 15. In a short period of time, the RG 15 had spread successfully in the F3B scene.
One of the reasons was that Girsberger's airfoils were represented by a sufficient number of coordinate points, so its contours were quite smooth. So the RG 15 was ideal for direct machining, while other airfoil data sets featured less coordinate points and therefore required interpolation, an approach that could yield bad results.
But it would be unfair to reduce the success only to the available number of coordinate points, because the RG 15 was a really high-performance airfoil and a lot of competitions have been won using the RG 15 (won World Championships: 1993 Denis Duchesne with Ellipse 1 and 1997 Daryl Perkins with V-Ultra plus). Also the first commercial F3B planes, like the Ellipse 1, Tragi, Calypso or the V-Ultra, all employed the RG 15.
The RG 14 was also quite successful. Nic Wright won the World Championships 1989 in Melun, France with his Electra that employed a thinned RG 14. Despite all the success, Girsberger did not continue his airfoil development because he found other challenges. In the nineties, programs for airfoil computation (like Xfoil by Professor Mark Drela) became available and a lot of people started to design airfoils. Nevertheless, the RG 15 could last a long time against these new designs and was also considered as the benchmark.
The fact that Girsberger was able to design such a perfect airfoil with relatively limited computer power is quite remarkable and is evidence that he really knew what he was doing.
In summary, the RG 15 was a breakthrough in F3B and a lot of excellent planes were built using this airfoil.

Acknowledgements
The Author Reto Fiolka is grateful to Rolf Girsberger, Emil Giezendanner and Rudolf Schaub for fruitful discussions.

F3B 2007 Report Back

2007-07-30T11:56:00.001+02:00

Part 1

The journey to this year’s F3B World Championships was certainly an interesting one. Early in the year I received news that Brian ( a colleague at work) was scheduled to take leave at the same time as me and that one of us would have to give up their trip in favour of the grindstone. Who would it be? When I informed the team and spoke to Paul Carnall (reserve) about the problem life became rather traumatic. It would be difficult for Michelle to make the trip by herself and if Mathew stayed home with me the Goodrums (senior) would probably not go either.

After a week or two of uncertainty and a little intervention from Wolfgang with the boss the problem of overlapping leave was solved and Brian organized with his sailing buddies to shift their voyage forward. The end result of all this was that I would not be able to join Michelle and Dion in Salzburg for the week long practice session before the Worlds, the great news was that I would get to take part in the premier gliding event.

Preparation for this years’ team started well in advance. Michelle and I had decided to fly Estrellas two years ago she had two and I had three (I broke one and while it was being fixed purchased Peter Eagles one). Michelle obtained an Eagle from Jiri Tuma as her third model in April after we saw how well Rodney’s one flew. Dion also wanted to fly something better than an X21 and purchased an Eagle and a Crossfire. Disaster struck about two months before we left during a practice session, Dion had been making excellent progress with the Eagle – matching me on speed and often giving me something to aim for during practice – when he experienced a full lock out at the top of the zoom and the model make a short and unsuccessful attack on the Earth. There was nothing left! With no time to spare to get replacement models and transport them here Wolfy came up with a diabolical plan to get one of the Salzburgers (Matzi) to fit out a Crossfire over there, and Dion would pick this up when he arrived the week before the contest.

I was confronted with a slightly different problem, three weeks before leaving Rodney told me about the fantastic Ceres by Jiri Baudis. After a little investigation we found out that it would be possible to get a ready to fly model two days before the worlds, I would try it out and if it was as good as they said then that would be what I would fly. To do this I needed some money – time to sell one of the Esrellas (this is the one Derek Marusich bought).

Michelle, Dion and Wolfy left the Friday before us and for a week before I left I was getting SMS’s asking for CA, sight, socks, porridge, tools, soldering iron, jacket, Wellington (Gummi) boots (I didn’t get a chance to go to the shops and find these and to Michelle’s credit I still have not had an “I told you so!”).. the list just wouldn’t stop. While Michelle was typing these SMS’s I was trying to make ultra light model boxes, we had limited luggage allowance and a lot of luggage so weight was a big problem, using cardboard boxes and finding boots would have been time better spent. Our luggage was already much less than it could have been, Wolfy organised that we borrow equipment from the Salzburg F3B team, this was well organised equipment and we actually used two Ricky Mitchell winches (Ricky your winches have been used in a World Championships!). Wolfy also managed to get us two vans at hardly any cost and our accommodation price was unbeatable.

Eventually it was time for us (Shirley (Mathew’s partner in crime), Rodney (field team manager – possibly another SA colours issue, and I) to join the team and we left SA the Friday before the start of the competition. Wolfy collected us from the airport at 7am in the morning and off we went to find Emmen. On the Saturday we went the contest site, collected equipment and then it was off to the practice field. At the practice field the Belgians had been having some frequency problems, then we saw an F3A type model flying about a kilometre away. The frequency being used wasn’t the same as ours so we took a chance and flew. It was the first time I flew the Ceres and although the flying characteristics were great I found it impossible to launch. Hmmmm. Later discussion with Jiri and I had a plan for Sunday. Our second helper, George, arrived later on Saturday and on Sunday it was time to train him about his job while we practiced. Well that was the plan. Instead it started raining, eventually we just flew in the rain breaks and drizzle – very soggy. The good news was that the Ceres was launching better, it is not as easy a model to launch as an Estrella but the pace in speed is better from a slightly lower height. Decision made, this was the model I would fly, the Ceres had an advantage in the speed and distance tasks which are always difficult to win.

Dion has chosen his somewhat pink model and Michelle had chosen her yellow high modulus DP Estrella. It is always good to go into a competition with a favourite.

The Worlds

Need I say more?

Duration
We all struggled in somewhat damp varying conditions. I would put the difference down to launch height more than anything else as we normally landed in the second half of the field but there was always that elusive higher model that stayed up longer. At this point things did not look great, we were off to a bad start. My first duration became a reflight after tagged the line of my neighbouring launcher as he flicked and flew across my path, his line broke as it cut into my “orange juice” (Dion), the organizers also announced my name to fly in the next slot while I was still flying (No idea why). The refly duration with the Estrella gave a similar result

Distance
In distance we were quite consistent but just not good enough, our calling was not sharp enough on the base B prep and too much time and distance was lost in the turns at base A and B. I was Flying the Estrella and the run was actually looking good (I thought it was at least a 900 points if we didn’t win) but then …wack….and the tail was no longer attached to the model, things just were not going to be easy this year. I had a chance to fly all three of my models in one round but decided to go with the Ceres again but the result was poor. Before I got to fly though they had rescheduled me for the group after Michelle and we had to do a quick changeover, I spoke to the CD and asked for time and they agreed, however this was not to be. By the time we had exchanged radios and turned on we saw that the working time remaining was 6 minutes, the organisers had forgotten to wait for us. Their comment “can you not still fly in this group?” – I just turned around and walked off the field, mumbling something to Rodney as I walked off, he sorted out that they rescheduled me for the final group.

Speed
Well the first thought had to be, “what speed?”

The team was struggling to be positive and the mud bath on the flight line was becoming more and more difficult to deal with as the day passed

The Radical

2007-07-24T06:30:00.000+02:00

Click on image to enlarge

Feedback comments from Dion

2007-07-23T18:03:00.000+02:00

Irony:
In a Matthew voice: “I want a leeetle thermal” - 5 min 51
In a more anxious voice “I want a beeeg thermal” – 10 min 01

Lucky break:
Dion steering a V-tail model on duration landing approach – found the correct one shortly afterwards.

Whats difficult:
10 models in a 50 – 100m diameter thermal, 7 are Crossfires which have exactly the same markings.
Flying up and down in straight lines.
Trying to make a model stay up when the heavens are beating it back down to the ground. (The earth sucks but heaven bats)

Joke:
Waiting at a stop street just outside the field for a really hot chick passing on the cyclist path after a hard day at the field. Craig “Nice bike!” Dion “….and you just want to ride it” (You had to be there)

Bad luck:
Pulling an early slot in speed, 15 guys do similar times, the conditions change, and the last 15 do ave. 3 sec less
Craig flying his brand new model into a line cutting the wing to the spar. Having a midair on the same day, destroying a brand new fuselage and V-tail.

Swiss precision and organisational skill:
Is a myth.

Swiss cheese:
Doesn’t actually have holes in.

Wow:
The Herrig brothers flying skills
Bartovski’s weather carts. Realtime radar images and charts which predict within 10 – 15 min accuracy windspeed & direction, precipitation, temperature, radiation levels, dewpoint, your next pee break.

Believe it or not:
The mud bath for 27 nations competing in a world championship could not be addressed by the farmer putting straw until his cow had finished calfing. The grass couldn’t be cut because the pig needed attention. The CD got fired. (not directly because of previous but I’m sure it contributed)

Essential equipment :
Wellies
Earplugs
Battery cart (Because the winch system must have a resistance of 23 ohm or more and the current the motor can draw is limited, and R=V/I , if the battery goes flat the resistance drops below the legal. So you have to charge after every 2 launches. Dumb rule)

Model trends:
Absolutely no protrusions on the wings (servo or link fairings).
Lots of UHM carbon.
Small diameter fuselages
Thin wingsections. Probably limited by the servos at this stage, but Multiplex are making a new generation of thin servos with less depth. So if the servo is further away from the TE there’s another mm or two thickness available.

The hot models:
Radical, Ceres, Precious, Tool, Isabelle

The has beens:
Estrella, Europhia, Race Machine, Team GBR

Why didn’t we do better?
Match practice, awesome pilots, stupid mistakes, very different conditions, risky decisions which didn’t pay off.

How to do better next time:
When you see serious clouds gathering or a thunderstorm brewing, grab your model and go to the flying field. Wear wellies while practising.
Fly faster speedruns.

Would you do it again?
Oh Yeah, F3J is for girls

Regards
Dion

New and Hot planes at last WC

2007-07-22T19:31:00.001+02:00

Hello again F3B fans - I downloaded this from RC groups - David Klein. I have tried to include some photographs of the aircraft he refers to but will have to look for some more. I will publish them as I get them In the meantime check out his comments on the Evolution, Radical and Ceres. (in this header shot of the Swiss team aircraft there is a precious on the left, a Ceres in the middle and an Evolution on the right)

A review of the planes flown at the 2007 F3b WCRDS- This is a feature that I have not previously seen on high performance F3b planes. Previously the airframes have been evolving towards bottom hinged, top driven linkages with short horns in order to hide as much of the linkage as possible. The Ceres is still done this way. The control horns are nearly flush with the surface, hiding 99% of the linkage. It seems that the Precious is done a little more conventionally, with bottom hinged flaps and top hinged ailerons, although Stephan Boehlan’s plane featured an RDS system. The Herrig brother’s planes took this a step further, their planes were not only RDS, but the system was installed before the molds were closed. There are no servo access doors, nor any linkages exposed. Once the molds were opened, wipers were installed, and the wings were finished. If I could order a wing this way, I would. The only disadvantage would be in the event of a servo failure, the servo would have to be cut out. The other most prominent evolution has been in the area of fuselage cross section. The planes fuses are shrinking in diameter, and the ballast is being moved to the wing. The reduction in fuselage diameter is in order to remove wetted area and thus parasitic drag. Sharp tail cones are also the order of the day. I like this, but would prefer to keep enough internal volume to have a small fuselage ballast tube. There isn’t a ballast system more desirable than the Estrella. It makes ballast changes possible inside your working time, lending an advantage to the pilot. I would like to note that the Herrig brothers had custom ballast tubes in their fuselages, not standard on a Radical.

Now onto the planes.

Listed in the order of desirability (at least to me)

Radical- This was the plane of the day. It took its hits in the duration department, but it blew the competition away during the speed task. As stated before the winning plane had some special modifications not available commercially. The plane had molded in servos with RDS, this allowed for an absolutely clean wing. It was also modified for fuselage ballast, but the Radical is standard with wing ballast. I would also note that the Herrig brothers carved very smooth sweeping turns; they did not pop the turns like some others. This may have been due to the light conditions and high wing loadings that they flew with. They definitely out launched most of the competition.

Ceres- This is my pic for my next round of purchases. This plane was flown by relatively few pilots due to its very recent release. Craig Goodrum of the Republic of South Africa got his during the Emmen Cup just days before the competition. He campaigned it well through the WC flying some fast speed runs and some even better distance laps. Jiri Baudis, the producer also displayed the planes strengths well, as did Francisco Pantano from Argentina. He compared it to his Freestyler 3 (the only one flown in the competition as having nearly identical flying characteristics and qualities. He flew the Ceres as primary, switching to the Freestyler 3 after some damage. Since this plane is available in the US through Soaring USA, it will be available really soon in two versions, F3F and F3b. The F3F version should come in built at 80 Oz and the F3b version should be 6-8 Oz lighter. For anyone purchasing this plane for slope racing, I highly recommend the heavier and more durable version; you will still be adding ballast anyway. For those buying the F3b version, get some mono and give me a call, I’ll show you how to fly it.

The Precious-Well the ever popular Furio got a even better in the next Bretta Model’s evolution, the Precious. This plane takes the cake for construction quality and cosmetics. It is absolutely flawless. The US team pilots took note as Stephan Boehlan launched his with great tension. This plane, like the others above features a great two piece removable v-tail system for ease of transportation. The fuselage has plenty of room for internal fuselage ballast, although I am not sure of the stock ballast arrangement. This plane is available in the US through Tom Copp at F3X.com. Give it a try, it is even better than the Furio.

Freestyler 3- I only saw one of these planes there. It looks just like a Radical, just a little smaller. Francisco Pantano of Argentina flew it after sustaining damage to his primary Ceres. He didn’t have a lot of time on this plane and commented that it was set up for slope flying. Andreas Herrig commented that the Freestyler 3 was better in distance than the Radical but slower in speed. It looks like a winner, but I haven’t seen enough of it to intelligently comment on it. Many California slope racers have ordered them, so we should see a lot of them really soon.

Evolution- The Evolution from Jiri Tuma, a sweet plane set up with RDS stock. I hope someone brings these to the US. Andreas Boehlen flew this plane for only one round, so I didn't get a good opportunity to evaluate its performance. But if the two time WC chose it for his quiver, it must be good.

Tool- This plane was very under represented at the 2007 F3b WC. Our Pilot Thomas Kiesling bought three from Skipmillermodels.com. He liked the model, commenting that it was easier to fly fast than the Crossfire. My observations were that it pulled a lot of tension during launch. The plane was cleanly built and penetrated well. This plane has got a lot of recent interest from the Norcal Slope Racers, we will see how it proves in future competition.

Estrella and Estrella DP. Wow, this plane is really the benchmark for an F3b model. I think it was the most popular model in the hanger, with many pilots filling out their quiver with one, two, or three. Reinhart Leise of Germany showed everyone how to fly them with a great speed performance in round one of the Emmen cup. This plane is awesome but still very expensive, selling for 1500-1700 Euros used. I am glad I got one when I had the chance. These planes are only available directly from Fisher Models in Europe, so they are hard to come by in the US. I feel that for their price and lack of global distribution, this plane is a hard sell in the USThese planes are the real notables from the F3b WC this year. Please feel free to send me an email is you have any questions. David Kleindjklein@ucsd.edu

Just to let you have some thoughts on the aircraft. Comments as always are welcome.

PeterP

Mike Smith's Report (USA Team)

2007-07-19T17:07:00.000+02:00

Hello again F3B Fans

It seems there is renewed interest in F3B all over - I saw this post from Mike (Smith - I'm guessing -see photo of him and intensely patriotic Altus planes he flew in recent World Champs) Anyway Mike graciously allowed me to quote his report as it has some good ideas and comments for the development of the sport.

Mike writes "

As far as the competition went... I came away from this event with a few choice nuggets. I agree that glider choice is important, but it was very clear that even if you had the winning glider, you weren't guaranteed a good result. F3B is very much a pilot skill, and preparedness test. He who spends the most time flying and competing with his gliders will be the best prepared, period. While the Herrigs were flying Radicals, they were executing their launches, and flights with great precision. It was obvious that their experience was the biggest reason that they won. I don't think there were any other Radicals in the top 10, but I am not sure about that. It is possible that Joroen Smits and John Skinner were flying Radicals, but again, I don't know for sure. I was flustered a bit by the delay in the horn from the timing system. The practice that Aaron and I did together got us very used to an instant confirmation of our crossing the line. If we didn't hear it in a fraction of a second, then we went around immediately. With this system, the delay is approximately 0.3 seconds, and is on top of any delay that might exist due to the turn by jury system. What was apparent was that we did indeed know where that turn was, but unfortunately, I didn't trust it enough and started back at least twice only to get the horn, and wiggle my way back down the line to the finish. Total cost was at least 2 seconds on one run and about 1.5 on another. The Altus is a competitive glider. My cut on the last speed run of the contest cost me 5th place, but wouldn't have helped out our team standings enough for second place.Smooth, round, carving corners were demonstrated by the Herrigs in their speed runs, and the results of knowing where the turn was, and keeping their model's energy up throughout the course is evident in their scores.Launch equipment was something we struggled a bit with. We were presented with batteries that had a remarkably low internal resistance. So much so that we spent two evenings modifying resistors on the winches, and adding resistor bars to the batteries to get above the 23 milliohm limit, with sufficient safety factor to survive a spot test on the line. I think our buffer was too high, but lack of experience with our own tester, and fine tuning the winches keeps me from knowing just how big an impact this had on our launches.All in all I think we did well. I know for sure that each of us is capable of performing better. As Tom mentioned, distance is so dependant on the team for air reading and stategy calls that lack of practice here hurt us for sure. And I agree that going to a contest in Europe would be a great way to get better prepared for the next WC's for anyone that makes the team. Personally, my opinion is that Tom, Aaron, and myself were/are top 10 pilots in the field for this WC. The results showed our lack of experience more than anything. This is without a doubt the Olympics of our sport. It has all the intensity, and level of competition of that caliber of event. Even though this was my second time going, I learned more this time than last time."

More importantly he ends with this which is just as applicable in SA "

"I am very encouraged to see that there is some more interest in flying F3B in the States (could be SA there are several people in building groups etc). Please get out there and fly the event. It will make you a better all around pilot, and it'll be a lot of fun too. Don't wait in line to buy the latest and greatest glider. Get anything that will hold up to the launces, and start flying. It is more about the experience of flying the event than it is getting the hot glider. Take my word for that.Thanks again,More later, Mike"

As always comments with names and sugestions welcomed.

PeterP

F3B League ideas

2007-07-17T18:29:00.000+02:00

Hi All

As Evan mentioned he and I thought of ways to increase interest in F3B. If we could get new pilots involved in multitask flying it would improve their piloting skills, get a greater depth of talent in gliding and strengthen competition in South Africa.

Also as mentioned a league system is currently being devised where "A" League (persons who have flown F3B) compete with each other to strict FAI rules.

Persons who have not flown multitask but have competitive aircraft (all those Shongololo's from the building groups!!) will fly in the "B" League and be assisted by the more experienced folk. "B" league pilots fly against each other not the "A"league and fly to modified FAI rules to ease their learning curve.

All others who are interested in improving their skills by flying multitask but do not have multitask specific aircraft will compete in the "C" League - this is an "all comers" league with seriously revised rules to ease entry. Here the "a" and "B" league pilots would be expected to help.

As Evan mentioned this will only go into effect next year and as such there is a lot o time to fine tune the rules. Please provide comments and leave your name so I can get back to you.

Who knows - maybe the next "Herrig brothers" are out there waiting to be discovered (See header photo - F3B Meeting at Kassel in Germany - first airing of the Radical!)

Thanks

PeterP

F3B Worlds Photos

2007-07-16T08:07:00.000+02:00

New F3B Blog

2007-07-15T19:11:00.000+02:00

Hi all

In the interests of promoting F3B in South Africa, we have created a Blog where we will be posting all future F3B stuff.

One of our first goals will be to create a league with regular F3B events. Peter Eagle and myself

have been discussing the idea of creating an A, B and C league.
Briefly, it will work something like below. Peter is working on a set of rules so this might change a whole lot but it give you some idea.

The A league will be for any pilots who has flown in an F3B event before.
The B league will be for pilots who would like to fly F3B and have the correct model, but feel they don't stand a chance against the "hot shot" pilots so don't ever enter any competitions.
And the C league will be for the all comers so to speak. Those that don't have an F3B glider but would like to try their hand at multitask gliding.

The idea is to host regular comps. Possibly one a month. A League pilots will not fly against the B league pilots, so will be your callers and timers. Helping you and showing you the ropes. The B league pilots will in turn help the C league pilots.

Anyway, more as we develop this. So if any of you have any suggestions please make comments. Be sure to leave your name.

Until later!