League #1 ETB

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

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

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

F3B Qualifier No 2 Results

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

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

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