Lots of progress at the Zenith Factory follow the link on the left for more details. Its is starting look like we know what we are doing the results are certainly look like we do.

Have fun fly fast!

F3B Eurotour - Dates Announced

The dates for next year's F3B Eurotour have been confirmed.

Details here: http://www.contest-modellsport.de/

The Arnhem competition is 8/9 May 2010 and the Anthisnes, Belgium competition is 4/5 September 2010.

Next year the Eurotour league results are based on best 4 results rather than 3.

1st Winter Practice report from Clive Needham

Brief report from Clive

Those who did not attend yesterday missed a golden opportunity to set up and trim models.
The weather was better than the forecast, which wasn’t too bad anyway.
There was a steady medium breeze without any strong gusts.
The biggest problem was the low sun which we were launching into all day due to the SSW wind direction.
Young Simon Haley was using an old model, the Obsession, launching himself under Dad’s supervision to a good height and getting in some excellent Distance practice.
His landings were also pretty close to the centre, so some of us had better watch out.
Bob Dickenson was getting to grips with his recently purchased second hand Estralla and was very pleased with it at the end of the day.
Chris Jubb has put together a Cobra from various parts of different ones and had some problems with the receiver end of the chain but was able to sort it out by the time we packed up.
I will be away for almost three weeks from the 1st Dec so Chris Jubb will be in charge of checking the weather forecast for a further practice day.
The most suitable dates would appear to be Sunday 6th Dec and the following Sunday the 13th as a reserve if the weather is poor, any later and it would be getting too near Christmas.

Baudis Cyril

The Cyril is the latest model from Jiri Baudis and is a brand new model. The Ceres Lift was a development of the Ceres F3B, same model with a different wing section. The Cyril is a completely new model and shares no parts at all.

So what are the differences? It is a smaller model than the Ceres with smaller wing chords and a slightly different planform. This gives the model a higher aspect ratio and the slight sweep forward of the trailing edge at the tip means that 'Gigaflaps' are not required to take the ailerons all the way out to the wing tip. The wing section is also different to both the Ceres F3B and Ceres Lift. The original Ceres was particularly fast but it was felt that the launch characteristics could be improved. Along came the Ceres Lift which launched much better as the name implies. The section on the Cyril is again from DP and is apparently in between the F3B and the Lift to give the best of both.

Structurally is where the major differences lie. The model is all RDS. The Ceres F3B has very small control horns hidden inside the wing. This looks good but slop is a problem which results in increased wear which results in increased slop, etc, etc. The Ceres Lift has RDS on the ailerons and horns on the flaps and works very well. For the Cyril Baudis has gone for RDS on all of the control surfaces and it really is excellent. Slop is virtually non-existent and centring and resolution are outstanding. An added bonus of the RDS system is that programming the control movements is very straightforward. The ailerons and flaps match up to each other very well as there are no differences in horn size and geometry to give varying movements from surface to surface.

The other immediately noticeable difference to the Ceres is the fuselage. Nosecone instead of canopy. The fuselage is also slightly chunkier at the front with an unusual cross section to allow room to carry fuselage ballast in addition to wing ballast. The wing carries 8x130g brass slugs and the fuselage carries 8x65g brass slugs. In practice the system is excellent; for Distance and Speed you put the minimum ballast you think you are going to need and if the conditions change you can fine tune with fuselage ballast. The F3F boys in particular are going to love this! The plane comes complete with a very neat CNCed ply servo mount which doubles up as a support for the front of the fuselage ballast tube. The servo mount is sized to take Graupner DS3728 or DS3781 or the JR equivilents DS3401 and DS3405. Carbon pushrods are included which I personally prefer to snakes.

The other differences are less obvious. The fuselage has formers inside to improve rigidity and the wings have ribs inside, again to improve rigidity. It all seems to work as my Cyril is definitely very light at only 2053g but is impressively strong and stiff. Unfortunately all this does come at a price as the Cyril is more expensive than the Ceres at 1470 Euros plus shipping.This increase is to cover the extra work involved in building the plane. 1470 Euros is not cheap but compared to Radicals, Shooters, Targets etc it represents excellent value for the level of performance you are getting. In addition, you receive a very comprehensive package as all of the hardware is included in the price; clevises, wiring loom, Multiplex plugs, ballast, RDS bits, servo mounts.

Assembly is pretty straight forward. The RDS is a bit of a head scratcher to start with as it is so unfamiliar but it is not difficult. I found 30 min epoxy to work very well as it gives you enough time to make final adjustments as it cures. I received my Cyril on Tuesday and flew it that weekend so it doesn't take long. I do build quickly but a couple of weeks of evenings should see a Cyril finished and ready to fly. Alternatively, Baudis offer a ready built option if you don't mind flashing a bit more cash. Kevin Newton did this and was very happy with the results: http://kevin-newton.blogspot.com/

I have flown mine a few times and I am extremely pleased with the results. After a couple of trimming flights on the slope and one afternoon of winch practice I took it to the last F3B league at Wetlands and got my best result of the season: 2nd. The flying characteristics are, for me, much improved on the Ceres. The Cyril feels nice and bouyant and very positive to fly. I found the Ceres very neutral and needed flying all of the time as it had a tendency to settle into a dive or a zoom if given half a chance. The Cyril is much better behaved and the biggest compliment I can pay it is that it is very like a Freestyler 3 to fly.

If you are in the market for a new F3B plane, the Cyril should be at the top of your list. If you are interested you can contact Jiri Baudis at info@baudismodel.com. Be patient, Jiri is not always the quickest at replying to e-mails. Delivery is approximately 3 months at the moment. In case you are wondering, I paid for mine!

F3B - the optimization of different flying states

Good read from the RSA blog

2009 Season Leader Board

1 Steve Hayley 500

2 Mike Challinor 462.97

3 Bill Haley 458.48

4 Ken Woodhouse 449.19

5 Dave Worrall 444.13

6 Mark Passingham 438.10

7 Norman Quirk 435.59

8 Bob Dickinson 399.64

9 Clive Needham 369.85

10 Alan Jones 351.87

11 Neil Harrison 351.59

12 Paul Carrington 259.14

13 Chris Jubb 258.59

14 John Whittle 179.66

15 John Phillips 170.29

16 Colin Lucas 162.21

17 Simon Jackson 91.14

18 John Stewart 83.40

19 Ian Duff 79.92

20 Brian Johnson 69.22