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The 2008 F1D Indoor World Championships have just taken place in a huge domed exhibition hall in Belgrade, Serbia.

The hall is over 90 feet high. The British team of Bob Bailey, Mark Benns and Derek Richards flew their fragile 22 inch wingspan rubber powered free flight models for 3 gruelling days in temperatures up to 39 degrees. Excellent support came from Peter Ing and John Shaw. 

The competition is all about duration, with many single flights of over 30 minutes. Each flyer has 6 attempts and his 2 longest flights are totalled to produce his individual score. The 3 scores from each country are added together in the team event. Although the American team were clear winners, the British total of 3:14:52 was enough to secure Silver medal position, ahead of the Hungarian flyers. 

In the preceding Open International contests, Mark Benns won the 35 cm wingspan class, Bob Bailey was second while Peter Ing came 4^th and John Shaw 5^th. 

Nick Aikman. GBR Team Manager.

The British F2A Speed Team, consisting of Peter Halman, Paul Eisner and Ken Morrisey, has once again taken the Team Gold Medal at the F2 Control Line World Championships in Landres, France. Their combined speed was 881.8 k.p.h. beating Hungary’s 863.9 k.p.h. into second place, by 17.9 k.p.h. with Italy’s 863.6 k.p.h. in third place.

This is the 12th consecutive year of World & European Championships that the speed team have taken the gold medal, an unprecedented achievement by any team in any category of model flying anywhere in the world.

Peter Halman was placed fourth with a best flight of 295.8 k.p.h. using the “Halman Special” Irvine engine. The contest was very close as he was only 0.1 k.p.h. from third place, and 0.5 k.p.h. behind the winner. Ken Morrissey placed sixth with a speed of 294.7 k.p.h. with Paul Eisner placed tenth with a speed of 291.3 k.p.h.

In F2B Aerobatics, Robert Kitley placed forty third, Barry Robinson placed forty fourth and Roy Cherry was fiftieth. The overall team placing was thirteenth.

All three F2C team team race teams were hopeful of making the semi-finals but with a cut off time a very fast 3 minutes 11.4 seconds it was going to be a very tough task. In the end, Mike Fitzgerald and Mark Thomason finished fifteenth with a fastest time of 3 minutes 15.5 seconds, Rob Leeman and John Broadhead were twenty first with a fastest time of 3 minutes 22.5 seconds and Malcolm Ross and Gordon Yeldham were twenty eighth with a fastest time of 3 minutes 29.5. As a team they were placed sixth.

Finally, in the F2D Combat category, Mervyn Jones placed eighth, Mike Whillance was twentieth with the team placing ninth.

John James

The F2D competition as part of the Barton F2 (CL) World Cup will count towards team selection for 2009 European Championships.

The meeting this Sunday is OFF

due to a poor forcast

Confirmed by Laurie Barr FSMAE

Saturday 16th August 2008  

Indoor Technical  Committee

The Children’s Flight Challenge was held recently. A full report and results is available now in the events section.