Austria’s Luca Aringer was the youngest flyer (at left) and reached the F1A fly-off. Mike McKeever’s F1A (above) ready for the first fly-off round.


it. Among them were the Austrians Gerd Aringer and his fifteen-year-old son, Luca; both of them flew gliders they had built, us- ing built-up carbon and balsa wings with geodetically-stiffened flaps which drooped after launch to increase the lift coefficient of the wing. It’s worth noting that today’s freeflight appeals to a wide age group; as well as young Luca, Canada’s Peter Allnutt, aged 80, also reached that fly-off. Finally, at nine in the evening, with the light getting difficult and a nine-minute max (remember, we’re talking about gliders launched with a 50-meter towline here!), the last fly-off saw Andrew down for just under five minutes and Robert Lesko of Croatia as winner. The Lesko wing airfoil was a slight- ly modified Makarov, rather than one of the currently popular low drag types; the skin was Textreme spread-tow carbon over a Kevlar honeycomb core.


In third place was one of the innovators of glider flying, Victor Stamov of Ukraine, who supplied many of the models flown at the con- test; tragically, two weeks later Victor suf- fered a massive fatal heart attack while fly- ing in a contest in Bosnia. Argentina was top team with the United States in fourth place.


Day 2: F1B Wakefields Day two saw the F1B event, with much


less obvious good air, and 36 flyers failed to make the extended four-minute max for the first round; a hard luck story was New Zealand’s Paul Lagan whose two timekeep- ers recorded 3:59 and 4:00, which when av- eraged and rounded down meant a sub-max. In the next round the US’s Walt Ghio dropped just four seconds, but his team col- leagues Alex Andrjukov and George Batiuk continued to max, as did Brian Pacelli, com- peting in his own right as the current World Junior Champion and often being the guy others followed for lift picking. During the afternoon there were long periods of dead air, with the electronic thermal detectors showing nothing and the long Mylar stream- ers drooping.


Waiting with a fully wound motor for


signs of a thermal for maybe 20 minutes in a one hour round, and knowing that your two other team members also need to fly gets pretty stressful. Finally at the end of Round 7 no team had a full house of maxes and the US team took the gold medal.


Thirty flyers came to the fly-off; the organ- izers scheduled this for 7 p.m. in the hope that thermal activity would be reduced and only nine managed the five-minute max; the Andrjukov model DT’d, but just behind a slight rise in the ground and out of sight of the timekeepers who had 4:50 on their


watches when they lost it. The sole US flyer in that last fly-off for seven minutes was Brian Pacelli, whose previous year had been pretty good. After winning the Junior Championships in Slovenia he won the F1B event at the US Nationals and also the AMA Scholarship, worth $14,500.


Here, at the World F1B Championships, he placed third, behind Turkey’s Ismet Yurt- seven and Albert Bulatov, the young Russ- ian winner. Bulatov’s model, which he built himself, is a flapper rather than having a fixed wing airfoil; he may have had help from some rising air, but he was a minute and a half ahead of the second placer, so this may be the way to go in the future.


F1C: Gas models


The F1C day started with grey overcast skies and variable drift. As well as compet- ing to good effect on the glider day, the two Austrians, Gerd and Luca Aringer, also flew F1C power, with Luca handling the pretty awesome models, which were flappers, with great confidence, and once more both reached the fly-off. The first round showed the drift was towards crops, so there was a delay while the launch line was moved; this happened again later in the day. Ken Happersett provided a few scary mo- ments for the US team when one flight


Jim Parker waits for the perfect moment (above left) to launch Ken Bauer’s glider. Britain’s Peter Brown built this superb F1B winder (above center),


FLYING MODELS


incorporating torque meter and electronic turns counter. Czech Republic’s Pavel Matocha flew this well-patched F1C (above right) to fourth place.


21


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