F3A Nordic Championships started in Jämijärvi, Finland. Conditions were not exactly ideal with brisk wind directly across the flying direction, but lets look at the bright side: it did not rain.
Most of the competitors were already at the location before Thursday, some of them as early as Tuesday. Practise, practise! Thrusday morning started with raising the national flags and model processing. All the parts of A and B models were marked, models´s rule conformity was checked as well as the FAI licences of the pilots. F3A model needs to be less than 2m in length and wing span, it must not weigh more than 5000 grams and it must not create more noise than dictated by the rules. Meanwhile, teams used their last offical practise slots.
Pilot briefing, and the ”race” was on. First two competitors took their models to the ready box. Takeoff clearance, and through the P-03 –routine, P-03 meaning “Preliminary round routine/2003”.
As mentioned, conditions were demanding. Wind tried to push models off course towards pilot. In F3A, it is the models Centre of Gravity-point that has to be taken through maneuvers, irrespective of what attitudes it takes from a model to achieve the task. It takes a seasoned pilot to fly all maneuvers with continuous wind correction. Four-time Nordic Champion Ola Fremming was most certainly the pilot who knew what wind correction means. Result: best after the first round.
Results can be found from the Results page. Below are some pictures taken by Juho Karppinen and Kari Sällinen.
0 Responses to “NC 2003: Day 1 – Thursday”