Day 1

Day one of the F3CN European Championships is in the books.

Today consisted of official practice, model processing and the official opening ceremony of the championships.

The GBR F3C team were up at 8.30 for official practice and all went well. The wind was still blowing hard, but if was certainly slightly less than it was yesterday. Mark was happy with his OMP M7 and so was Ian flying his Hirobo Eagle 4, but Steve was not quite satisfied with the setup of his JR Sylphide. Model processing, which is the officials way of measuring and checking each entered model for rule compliance was carried out straight after practice and went without a hitch, in fact, this was probably the easiest processing at a championships that I have experience and the officials should be applauded for there knowledge of the processes and the way they handled them.

After this it was back to the practice sites to try and get some much needed practice in. The team discussed with Steve his thoughts on what he needed to do to get his model to perform better and then all of the pilots cracked on with what they needed to do helping each other with calling and spotting. By the end of the session all were happy in the still less than ideal conditions in high winds.

Back at the main site our team mates in the F3N class were carrying out there official practice and model processing and I’m informed that all went swimmingly like ours.

The official opening ceremony was next and it was great to all be together as one. Speeches, (thankfully short!) were carried out by the event CD and the chairman of the CIAM sub committee along with the hoisting of the FAI flag and it was declared that the event was finally open. We were greeted with a local Danish tradition of cakes and a lovely desert wine (think it was more fire water!) I the fantastic club house for a short social event with all of the pilots, supporters, officials and event helpers.

A team managers meeting was held shortly afterwards where the starting orders was set and a few notification were announced. Our first pilot tomorrow is Mark Christy flying at 10.20, Steve Roberts at 13.20 and Ian Emery at 15.00.

The event is being run online with live scoring which can be found at www.f3scoring.com

Steve Roberts

Day 2

Today was round one of the preliminary rounds. In F3C we fly 4 preliminary, the top 28 go on to fly 2 semi-final and the top 10 after this go onto 2 finals.

With the way the flying order worked out we hashed out a plan over breakfast for Mark to head to the practice field for a warm up flight, with Ian and myself (Steve) heading to the main site to watch the first few pilots before Mark arrived in plenty of time for his flight at 10.20. The weather was completely different to yesterday with fairly low winds, but it was steadily picking up while we were waiting for Mark.

Marks flight was uneventful and was hard to pick out faults with. Ennio Grabber from Switzerland who is reigning champion flew a few pilots before Mark was it showed that Mark flew extremely well.

Ian and myself headed back to the practice site for our warm up flights straight after we had had a short de-brief with Mark on his flight and found that the wind was still blowing fairly hard but possibly more down the flight line. A couple of flights later we raced back to the main site ready for Steve’s flight.

The wind by now had picked up but it didn’t seem to be as turbulent as it had been the day before. Steve like Mark put in an excellent flight and seemed happy to have got round one out of the way.

Ian had to wait an hour and half for his flight and was to be the last pilot of the day. This is Ian’s second EC but his last was in 2016. Ian is very focused and his mental attitude to the pressure is superb. Ian again like his team mates did a sterling job.

So the GBR team ends day one with Ian in 12th, Mark in 9th and Steve in a remarkable 2nd.

Steve Roberts

 

For fun I thought I’d also work out the team results for the day and the UK are currently in 2nd place with 23 points with Switzerland in 1st only 1 point ahead. We have a long way to go, but things are looking promising for us all to progress to the next stage of the competition.