F3B Termine 2025

9th Hohenstoffeln-Pokal
Binningen

SUI
12.-13.04.2025
20th Kirchheim OpenHülbenGERcancelled
4th Denmark Open F3B RødekroDEN24.-25.05.2025
1st F3B Cup München(?)Southern Bavaria (Plans just started, not sure)GER(07.-08.06.2025) Date will change
3rd East Belgium F3B CupBüllingenBEL05.-06.07.2025
13th International F3B CupJesenikCZE
16th Sonnenwendpokal Pre-Contest for World ChampionshipNardtGER09.-10.08.2025
F3B World ChampionshipNardtGER11.-16.08.2025
27th Lippeweiden Pokal LünenGER20.-21.09.2025
3th. Nortel CupGöppingenGER
Condor CupChileChile

Changelog:

25.10.24: Binningen: changed date!

28.10.24: Kirchheim is cancelled

02.11.24: bei F3B.de ist Jesenik, Göppingen und Chile nicht mehr drin…

26. Lippeweidenpokal F3B Lünen 2024

Finally, i get to do the report for Lünen F3B 2024. Work keept me really busy since. Even the training for 2025 did not start yet. 😉 Sorry for the long delay.

Lünen is always a special date in the F3B calendar. It is the oldest still active F3B competition that we have and that is reflected in every aspect. The perfect organization of the competition is only one small aspect of this. It starts well before that. The get-together with the other pilots on Friday evening, drinking a beer, is a perfect start into a great weekend of F3B. For the following days you can also be sure to be perfectly catered and cared for. Especially with the famous Currywurst for lunch.

A little atypical for Lünen was the morning on both days: only very little fog that was basically gone when the competition started.
We had a little wind from north-eastern direction. The forecasts predicted a little bit more.
But they were not wrong: The wind was just a bit higher up. This resulted in most teams having too small diameter lines on their winches and the line breaks started immediately with the first launch. The first group needed two new start attempts because of lots of line crossings. After some hints from the competition director, most realized to better use a thicker line next time and finally we were able to start the competition.
Duration was not easy but most of the pilots managed to stay up long enough. A small increase in difficulty came from the new flight restriction zone to the east where the emergency helicopter flies. A good addition and well executed with a helper that gives feedback to the CD and pilots to stay out of that area.

The wind decreased during the day and the launch altitudes with the following speed task were far from what they are on every training day. Steffen made a great 14.57s as the second pilot with almost a second distance to the second Jürgen Pölzl. I was not happy with my 18s flight, but it was still mid-tier since a lot of pilots were in the 18s-20s range. The bad launch altitudes just did not allow for much more. Thermals also became stronger making it a bit of a lottery when it was your time to fly.

Distance was quite normal with usually 20-26 legs for the winner. Just the thermals were again well visible with only small stripes of good air and immediate sinking next to it.

After the lunch break we continued with distance of round 2. And we were immediately in for a tread! Björn Schlotmann and Theo Weberschock opened with a win with 11 legs!  Not every day that you see this.
And it was not even the worst conditions for a group. Group 5 was won by Josef Singer with just 10 legs, directly after Markus Becker showed 27 legs in group 4. So you can clearly see that there were some strong and big thermals moving around. Conditions changed very quickly and made tactics quite difficult.

Speed became even slower on average. The median was almost 19s. Just 21 pilots under 18s.
And the wind keeps getting less. 16s and 17s were really good results.

The final duration was again quite uninteresting. Just the first group got an incredible thermal with all aircraft very high up in the air. And with this big boom, the thermals decided to just fade away. The last groups had to fight a bit, but all with good results.
In the end we completed 2 entire rounds on the first day.

Sunday began with the election of the German “Aktivensprecher”. We had four suggested names. Probably something that had never happened before. In the end, Reinhold Krischke got elected with the most votes. This clearly shows the high interest of the pilots in F3B and their willingness to participate and engage for our sport.

Wind conditions did not change much. Almost no wind on the ground with a bit more from 50m onward. Thermals were not really present yet, just areas wit a little less sink speed. Every mistake was immediately penalized and show up in the scoring sheets with multiple 8 and 9 minute flights.

Distance was quite average with mostly around 20 legs for the winner out of still quite bad launch altitudes. We had several problems in team Foo with no clear wins and several lost legs. We might have to do more regular training to reduce the mistakes…

Speed very similar to Saturday. Just this time it was Andreas Böhlen wo did an amazing flight, almost a second fast than Andreas Herrig. Even he admitted that this flight was quite risky, but after a bad speed result in round 2 he had not a lot to lose.

After lunch we continued with a final speed in opposite order of the ranking. Andreas Böhlen apparently memorized the last flight and was just a little slower with 15.23s. I was finally able to not do major mistakes during the flight and wound up third with 15.91s behind Jan Stonavsky (15.77s). What a great way to end the season.

The final score was won by Jürgen Pölzl with all distance flights won and speed always in the top 7. Jens Buchert with 98.85% and Steffen Besemer with 98,58%. Andreas Böhlen just missed the podium, but a great recovery!

But the competition was not over! The best 8 pilots get to fly a speed Flyoff. Flying 1 vs 1 in a Knockout race for the fastest speed time within 5 minutes. This is always a great spectacle and a lot of fun. I was so happy to be a part of it as flight helper of Steffen and getting some lines back for Matthias and Andreas. I completely forgot the time and how the Lünen price giving works. And this was my biggest mistake of the weekend. I only had a few minutes left of the Flyoff until the pricegiving ceremony and when I had to announce the overall winner of the CONTEST eurotour. Unfortunately, I made a big mistake in that rush.
Steffen Besemer wins the CONTEST Eurotour F3B 2024 with 299.09 points! Second, and where I made the mistake, is Jürgen Pölzl with 298.14%. Third is Jens Buchert with 297.53%.
I want to again apologize to Jürgen for this mistake. It should not have happened. I even prepared his certificate before the competition, but just did not realize that there was one decimal comma instead of a point in the spreadsheet.
However, this is something I can fix during the winter break. My goal is to have this point calculation done automatically by a program next year.

So you can see there is already some things going on for next year.

The official registration of the competitions with Fai is in a few days and you can already see the preliminary dates on fooblog.de and on https://www.f3g.info/competitions.

______________________________________

Liveblog:
Nette Leute, F3B, Currywurst, Freibier, wir kommen😎

ergebnisse/results:

https://f3xvault.com/?action=event&function=event_view&event_id=3358

12:30

sorry for the late first post. we started with little wind on the ground and only minimal fog. perfect weather for Lünen!

Duration started with conplete reglights twice because of linecrossings at launch. The wind 50m up is a lot stronger…

Duration was not easy, but usually doable with only a few people not making the 10 minutes.

Launch altitutes are not the best.

Afterward we continued with speed. wind got slower again, the resulting altitudes even worse. depending on the infrequent thermals, the speed times differentiated quite a lot. Steffen with a wonderful 14,4s, i was not happy with my 18s flight.

Now we continued with Distance. Usually, we have around 22 legs for the best pilot.

12:50

just a quick info:

the plannings for the f3b year 2025 are already running.

Sebastian Haase, Harald Vieweger and me are in contact to give all of you an early information about the competitions. The potential organizers will get mail from us soon as well.  (registration with FAI is until 11. November latest)

This is a link to the current planning: be aware that these dates might change quite a bit in the next 1-2 months. I will make an update after Lünen with this link and an update what dates are already fixed.

https://www.f3g.info/competitions

We try to not have f3b and f3g at the same date. But we also agreed that we want to keep the single class competitions  going while having some organizers that want to do both f3b and f3g simultaneously.

A big thanks to Harald and Sebastian for their work and the great communication.

14:20

we had a small lunch break. currywurst, yummy…

now distance round 2. björn opened with 1000p and 11legs^^

steffen 1000p par with hoppe and 19 legs.

14:45

Markus 1000p wit 27 legs. thermals are rapidly changing the flying conditions.

17:15

speed round 2 with very slow times. Launches are getting a bit better now, but best is around 16, 17 and 18 are really good times.

19:00

finished with duration. two rounds completed!

first group with an incredible thermal, afterwards much less upwind. the flighttime was sometimes not easy, but mostly doable.

Sunday

9:00

the getman pilots elected a new Aktivensprecher. We had 4 (!) suggestions. The vote was won by Reinhold Krischke. Congratulations!

duration started with almost no ground winds. but 50m up, it was already stronger. thermals were not present, just areas with less sinking. every mistake was quickly penalised.

distance with around 20legs average. we had mixed results. more training is definitely needed.

12:45

speed is almost done. Böhlen with an incredible 14,xs . most others over 17/18s.

13:15

short lunch break. next speed in opposite order of the ranking.

21:15

I had some stress during the final speed with a reflight and then the Lünen „special“ Fly-off. So no live feed then.


Unfortunately that also let to a very unfortunate error in the calculation of the CONTEST results.
Jürgen Pölzls win today was eaten by the spreadsheet and i did not recognize it in time. I am very sorry Jürgen, the corrected complete Ranking will be up in a few minutes. You made second place in the year ranking after Steffen Besemer and ahead of Jens Buchert.

23:45

some more pictures uploaded. Thanks to Martin for taking some during both days.

Link to the Contest Eurotour results of 2024:

„Foocup“ 2024 – Training days , 24./25.8.

After Binningen was canceled, we started to think about a team training session. Markus was so kind to invite us, and five Foos met at the Windberg. And wind we have! Thickest ropes and even some thicker winch diameter to avoid too many breaking ropes. But still, we have quite a few problems.

Altitudes are amazing with very heavy ballast. speed times are low, we already managed to get below 13s. (Markus)

How is the training organized?

We prepared four winches for easy return of all ropes by one person. In speed, you fly all four winches once, then you rotate to the B base to press the button for the turns of the next pilot. Afterwards you get the flown ropes and help the next Pilot or modify your aircraft.

Thos works quite efficiently. we are also testing the picamtracker hard and software, but have some problems currently. Reliabiltity and orientation is not good enough for the very tightest turns yet. some more tuning will happen over the day.

Sunday

wind is a little lower, but we still started directly with a breaking rope… hopefully not so many more today. We had around 15 yesterday. But of course we are flying some quite old and already repaired lines.

Weather is great with a bit lower temperature, but the sun already has power to make it feel quite warm.

We did several distance tasks today. Boy, do i have to do some setup optimization in the next weeks. It did not go so well for me. In both good and bad conditions…

Weather holded perfectly and we had an amazing weekend. A huge thanks to Markus for the invitation. We will gladly come back some time!

Now, we are on our way back home. But not for very long: Lünen is up in afew weeks and we will drive back up into the Pott!

Zwischenstand Nationalteam GER 20.7.2024

Finally it is a fair time to have a look at the current scoring for the German national team for the World Championship.
And we do have quite some changes to 2023.
First of all we have a change in first position! Steffen is now leading the score with a great run in 2024 so far.
Andreas is a little bit behind, with only a few competitions, but more upcoming. But even one more win will not be enough to get to first place again. The margins are really thin at the top of the list!
Jens came up quickly to third place. He had a really good but not perfect run in 2024. The one „bad“ result from last year with 95,93% is still in his score, this is probably going to change soon. (A result all pilots behind are usually only hoping for. Me included…)

For these three, everything is still open. Theoretically all of them can make first place.
Purely theoretical, Johannes Krischke and Matthias Neumann have a numerical chance to make it to the top three. I hope to see you both back in the competitions soon!
Frank Thomas had amazing competitions, but only three up to now. If we even get to three more competitions, he would have to score exceptionally well in all of them.

Basically this is the race for the top three spots already. Following this, there will still be a lot of changes depending on upcoming competitions. I am very happy with my current fourth place but am very aware that starting with me, the final accounting will only be done at the end of the year, and not before. (Yes, Matthias, I am referring to your saying: Abgerechnet wird am Ende!)
Markus Becker is very close. Karl Hinsch with impressive constant results in the 93% to 97% range is a special candidate with very good knowledge of thermals and a year 2024 that was rich in difficult duration tasks! Helmut Edenhofer can easily gain several points with another good result.
Reinhold Krischke with almost always over 90% is also not far behind. Steffen Hoppe and Karl-Heinz Schneider with a small gap, but especially in this range, one good results makes a big difference.

The full list: No guarantees, if you spot a mistake, please tell me!

RankName, First nameTotal points. 2023 and 2024 2 best each + 2 more best from both years2 best in 20232 best in20245. best6. best
1Besemer, Steffen 597.46199.59200.0099.0998.78
2Herrig, Andreas 596.12200.00197.9999.4598.68
3Buchert, Jens592.19199.01198.6898.5795.93
4Rieger, Christian576.54194.78191.7895.1794.81
5Becker, Markus 571.99191.02195.5693.7591.66
6Hinsch, Karl 569.15192.72189.1393.7593.55
7Edenhofer, Helmut 563.99195.44179.1395.7293.70
8Krischke, Reinhold 558.84190.49183.0993.1992.07
9Hoppe, Steffen542.87185.10177.1790.6889.92
10Schneider, Karl-Heinz538.41182.41184.6287.1084.28
Hortzitz, Armin 472.69192.11185.8594.730.00
Neumann, Matthias 487.35197.2297.4496.3796.32
Krischke, Johannes395.84199.510.0098.4997.84
Thomas, Frank291.72195.0996.630.000.00

2nd East Belgium Büllingen 2024

Do not forget to register for the next competitions. Especially Jesenik (17.08.2024, https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/332 ) and Binningen (24.8.2024, https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/298 ) are in need for some more pilots.

Sorry for the delay, I had a week of holiday after Büllingen, visiting Belgium, the Netherlands and helping at the Air Cargo Challenge in Aachen (A student model aircraft competition, check it out!)  One team from Naples just crashed their aircraft before the competition and desperately needed motivation and support to repair the aircraft. Together with parts from all other participating team we managed to get it to a flight ready state and in the end I was even asked to fly it during the competition flights. (Thank you for trusting me with your aircraft!) A great twelfth place out of thirty was their reward for not giving up during their first participation in this competiton series.
But it also resulted in me having no time for this report until now. Eurotour ranking will be updated in the evening or tomorrow as soon as I get to work at a big screen and with my home PC again.

Results: https://f3xvault.com/?action=event&function=event_view&event_id=3295

Büllingen 2024. Wind and cold may hurt your winch, but it will not stop a F3B competition!

After the debut last year, Country flyers and Feuervogel Büllingen combined forces again to support main organizer Marc Mölter in organizing the second east Belgium F3B competition. The expectations were high and the preparations started early. Sebastian designed his take on how a F3B measuring system should look like. And boy, he delivered. (Of course with support by Andy and Marc) No system failure all weekend and everything fits into three small boxes. In my opinion that is the way to go and I am extremely happy that new smaller equipment reduces the effort for the organizer and helpers, allows for simple transportation and in combination with mobile internet delivers the results in near real time to competition websites like f3xvault.

But lets go back to the competition. The winch lines were shifted to the east to allow for more landing space to the west if you make your last distance leg in that direction. This simplified landings in the distance task dramatically and I think no pilot had a problem this year.
The flight restrictions stayed the same, so no flying in the south during distance and speed.

After the obligatory briefing we started with duration. The wind was very strong from the south, clouds covered the sun and the temperatures were low. Not what we expected from July. But F3B pilots are made out of tough material and so we fast arrived at the big challenge: how is it possible to fly for ten minutes if you just cannot find any lift? Ok, as usual, some people must have some magic glasses that show them the way, but even for them, it was no walk in the park! Any small thermals passed very quickly. And you had to decide even faster if you wanted to circle or just continue searching. It was more a competition of how to loose the least amount of energy in turbulent weather conditions. Sub eight minute flights were quite frequent and resulted in the first point differences.

We continued with two back-to-back distance flights under similar conditions. The wind turned a bit more to the west, allowing basically both starting directions simultaneously, which was used by several pilots. Due to the fact that flying in the south was prohibited, the options were reduced: fly closely over the hilltop we were standing on, or going away into the lee side with unknown problems on how to get back to the airfield during the last legs. The high wind speed not only allowed high ballast masses, but also required it to achieve a good glide ratio during the task. But the wind direction exactly from the side posed a problem: immediately after release of the model, there was no wind component that supported the lift of the aircraft. The first half of the each winch launch was therefore quite complicated and resulted in a lot of suboptimal launches. The fast moving thermals added to the complexity. If you got lucky, a bit of thermal activity changed your entire flight. Seeing the signs of these weather changes made the difference between the pilots, some only reaching half the legs of the group winner. And they did not necessarily fly bad, sometimes it was really just down to bad timing and not recognizing the signs. I read later that Theo Weberschock did his first distance task win, congratulations there! And then he repeated the 1000 points in his second distance flight. Very nice!

A pause due to an incoming storm with lots of rain delayed the start of the first speed task.
After it passed, the winds were a little lower, but the air humidity increased a lot.
Like in the distance task, the aircraft were heavily ballasted and still managed to achieve good altitudes. The last two legs were however tricky to fly. Turbulence caused by the airfields buildings were strong and in the low altitudes quite dangerous.

A second speed task followed immediately, with the winds turning more towards west. This made the launches much easier and Steffen Besemer was able to make some tight turns, resulting in a 12.69s time with a slightly repaired aircraft.

In the evening a big pizza group order was organized. This resulted in most pilots staying at the club home. I loved this throwback into my first F3B competitions where the pilots had dinner together and had time to talk with each other.

The night was really cold for all the camping people, but fortunately we did not quite hit the predicted 2°C. Still, was it really July???

Sunday

Sunday started with a clear sky and a lot of sun. The wind speeds were about halved, the direction however changed back to south and south-west, requiring to change some winch directions again.

After his great success in the distance tasks yesterday, Theo Weberschock had a mid air collision with Pascal Mestermann during the initial duration task. Pascal was able to recover his aircraft and made the 1000 points, but Theo had less luck. He continued in a reflight with a Dassel aircraft. A design from multiple times his age ago. And he absolutely rocked it. The first launch was a bit bumpy, but the relaunch was already surprisingly high and he made the full ten minutes of flight time in difficult conditions! His main sponsor can be very proud! J
A technical defect unfortunately resulted in a crash during the next task.

The third duration was flown immediately afterwards. Thermals were getting strong and while most groups had to fight for flight time, I was lucky to find a strong thermal to lift me up high into the air. The others saw that of course, so that group was quite easy for most.

Distance of round three was surprisingly bad in results. The thermals just moved too quickly with the crosswind and pilot who tried to go with them into the lee side had big problems getting the aircraft back to the airfield in low altitude against the wind. Usually we had sub 20 legs maximum. Three times even only 15 legs. Naturally, the ballast was lowered in an attempt to keep the aircraft aloft for more than three minutes. Some groups were lucky, this round I was in one of them and Peter Hubbertz and me managed to get 27 legs both.

In the end a final speed was done in regular order of the starting list. Pascal Mestermann and Peter Hubbertz, flying directly before me, got a strong thermal allowing them even to circle a bit. Together with high ballast, Pascal managed a 12.65s with his slightly repaired aircraft,(it seems repaired aircraft are fast this weekend!) Peter made 13.28s. I was also happy to still make 14.33, lowering my personal best from Kulmbach again slightly by two 1/100th seconds.

This concluded a great weekend of flying under challenging conditions, but with a lot of fun!
Steffen Besemer lost the least amount of points and won the second East Belgium F3B Cup, followed by Soren Krogh and Christoph Sarter. Differentiation between the pilots was quite high and the percent results dropped quickly. A huge thank you goes out to the team around Mark Mölter, the Countryflyers and Feuervogel Büllingen for again organizing this wonderful event, directing the competition in a consistent and relaxed way and creating an amazing timekeeping tool that I look forward to see again next year and maybe even at other events.

The food and drinks were perfectly organized and tasted great. Thank you for making this event so wonderful again.

Finally we had the possibility to thank for and celebrate Uwe Schlaffke-Mowinkels big contributions to our sport, organizing competitions, managing the public side of f3b.de, calculating and posting the Worldcup points so quickly even if he was not participating the event, and so much more for more than 15 years. He also participated in the competitions and our community for even much longer, but due to health reasons decided to fly his last competition as participant in Büllingen. Thank you Uwe, for your amazing contribution to the sport we all love and we will see each other again in Lünen in a few weeks!

Don’t forget to register for the last three competitions this year!

Jesenik (17.08.2024, https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/332 )
Binningen (24.8.2024, https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/298 )
Lünen (21.09.2024, https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/323 )


Original Live-Posts:

Realtime results!!! Amazing job!

https://f3xvault.com/?action=event&function=event_view&event_id=3295

Starting lists and winchlines: https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/318

8:15

Briefung started. not very warm, strong winds already. we start in 10min with duration

9:50

duration done. differentiation conditions. a lot of pilots with sub 10 and sub 8minutes flight time.

thermals pass very quickly.

next distance

12:30

very strong winds exactly 90°. very short thermals and a lot of sinking. model are at the maximum weight. take off difficult because of lack of wind speed against the launch direction. often best to worst pilot is less than half the points.

we immediately continued with round 2 distance and are almost done as well. same conditions.

15:14

we currently have a break due to storm and rain.

16:00

we continue with speed round 1. little less ground winds. high humidity.

18:00

already speed round 2. wind is more west making starts easier. steffen with a 12.69s!

18:30

finished for today .

SUNDAY

we woke after a cold night to a clear sky, full sun and half yesterdays wind speeds.

10:00

First duration almost done. Unfortunately a midair by Theo Weberschock in the last group. he will continue with a Dassel aircraft, designed years before he was born. the last group will fly again.

11:30

third duration almost done. there are intervals with no thermal resulting in sub 8 minute flights and sometimes great single thermals that lift you up hundreds of meters.

14:00

fistance round three completed. usually sub 18 legs in difficult air. often relaunches that sometimes helped. but still flight times of often just 3 minutes. Peter Hubertz and me got lucky and found a thermal coming through. 27 legs both.

15:30

final speed done. some great times in the end.