Welsh Open F3F
19-11 Sept 2014
Welsh fest
Mickeys... The Wrecker... Back of the Wrecker.. Ice Cream slope... VR slope... the Crest. Ordinary sounding names for an extraordinary range of slopes - and the reason why the Welsh Open attracts so many pilots, year after year.
The weekend
This year there were 37 entries from UK, Spain, Germany, Holland and Switzerland. Although it stayed dry all weekend, the first couple of days suffered from a lack of wind. Only one round was flown on Friday, and it was group scored. Four rounds were flown on Saturday. Things picked up a bit on Sunday, and six rounds were flown before the wind finally gave up.
There was also a fair bit of thermal activity and times varying from the high thirties to the high seventies. But all in all it was a very enjoyable competition with great displays of skill.
Impressions
I'll save a blow by blow account, just some impressions:
- Pumping... I have to admit to having been sceptical about the benefits compared with 'lift scraping', but after watching Simon Thornton and other expert pumpers I have to admit that it can work awesomely well on the right slope with a good pair of thumbs.
- The horizontal cartwheel of JP's Crossover as it was pushed just beyond the limit. Damage was slight.
- Kev Newton back on his home turf and finishing a very strong fifth.
- The stupidly close scores near the top, less than one point (out of 1000) separating third and fifth place.
- The continued rise in the standard of flying.
- Last but not least, Stefan Bertschi who traveled all the way from Switzerland to show us how to use a catapult. He also won the competition!
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to CDs Kev Newton and Andrzej Tabero who showed his dedication by CD'ing without the pleasure of competing. To Daniel Schneider for posting the scores to F3XVault. And finally to our sponsors T9 HobbySport for the tasty prizes of MKS servos.
Results: top 10
1 S Bertschi 1000.0 2 S Thornton 998.0 3 T Livingstone 975.6 4 J West 975.3 5 K Newton 974.9 6 G Mahoney 969.1 7 M Newnham 965.7 8 A Burgoyne 963.2 9 D Rumble 956.4 10 M Drewett 945.9
Full results and scores here
Photos
See gallery.