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 1/100^th 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 )

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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.