F3B World Championship Calendar

I have just received a calendar I bought from the 2013 WC organisers. The calendar runs from now (August 2013) to July 2015. The calendar has a score list from every world championship (1977 to present) and some cool pictures. It is now adorning my office wall. Available from the 2013 WC website - contact Reinhard Dylla.

pictures link (ipad etc)

F3B Nationals - RAF Cranwell

The bank holiday weekend of the 24th, 25th and 26th of August was the weekend the BMFA nationals were held at Barkston Heath. The silent flight nationals were held a few miles away at RAF Cranwell, due space restrictions at Barkston. Unfortunately the weather was not as good as it has been this summer and I arrived to a sea of umbrellas.

The decision was that we would drive over to Barkston heath to sample the delights of the trade stalls (okay food stalls) and make a weather call at 12:30pm. As it turned out the weather actually cleared up around 10am, but at 9am it had been incredibly wet and the chances of flying an hour later looked extremely remote. By 12:30 there had been no rain for a while we headed back to Cranwell and setup the course. Unfortunately only one round of duration was completed before the rain returned. I would advise against leaving your car door and window open if there is a strong chance of rain.

Despite some parts of the day being as wet as the proverbial otter's pocket, it was a fun day out with the F3b guys and we will fly the nationals on the reserve date.

F3B Electric - Motor Log

Further to my entry on f3b electro set-ups, I had chance to fly my Extreme today with the electric set-up. Below is a graph of the power, which shows that peak power is over 1.5kw. It's a bit hard to interpret the graph as castle creation speed controllers logging is continuous. With soaring gliders the motor is only on for very short periods relative to the length of the flights. By way of example I had a 25minute+ flight with my Xplorer 2 electric off under 20 seconds motor run. Needless to say the graph of the log from the ESC is not that useful. It would be much nicer if the ESC only logged data when the throttle was actually on. The downs on the graphs are more to do with the speed controller settings which brake the motor quite slowly.

Anyway, I did a couple of short test flights to get some figures. These show the peak power is 1.5kw on a 17x13 prop, with a castle creations 100amp esc and sloperacer geared inrunner. The Hub is 28mm IIRC.

Other photos from a fun afternoon.

Photos from last season.

This is just a general picture post using my photobucket stuff from last year. The pictures are from various league rounds of the 2012 season. Non flash users please click the "view all" button. You can also see larger versions of the pictures by clicking "view all".

F3B WC 1997, Golbasi, Ankara Turkey

Simon Thornton has kindly sent me these pictures from the 1997 WC. GB won a team silver that year flying Cobras. DP used the Cobra to win the next WC.

The photos largely speak for themselves! If you double click on a photo you will be taken to the album and the photos will be larger.

If your device doesn't have flash (e.g ipad/mobile device) please click here to see the photos.

Frsky Taranis For F3B

FrSky has recently released its new taranis TX into the wild. Essentially this TX is made from a plastic case that virtually the same as the JR 9x2. The software is OpenTX which has been around for a while on some modified hobby king hardware. The greater processing power of the taranis has allowed the OpenTX developers to increase the software functionality. OpenTX is an open source project.

The first obvious characteristic of the transmitter is the price, which is about £140-00, including charger, metal case, neck strap and so on. An 8 channel receiver is under 25 pounds and high sensitivity vario is about 18 pounds. Clearly low prices are not synonymous with f3b due to the programming complexity that many pilots employ and the top end transmitters they use. E.g the graupner and jeti range.

Where the Taranis might be of interest to f3b pilots is its software features. People familiar with the multipex profi 4000 will quickly get to grips with the Taranis. It employs the same principle of mixing with each servo having a number of inputs of its own. Switch assignments etc. are user choice. Unlike the 4000, the transmitter is fully integrated with modern telemetry sensors and using the vario you can flick a switch that will tell you your height (it can function as a normal vario, of course). This is a very useful feature for launch practice, obviously. Especially as you can also log the data on SD card. Compared the 4000 the Taranis also has more powerful functions in terms of logical switches and custom functions. For example, you can make the TX respond to telemetry data - You could make it switch off the motor at set height, using data from vario. The Taranis has a built in speak and headphone socket which can be used for timers, telemetry data, voice outputs and so on.

The Taranis has 9 flight modes - that is a good number for us f3b pilots who really have at least 4 different modes and usually more. However, where I feel the Taranis is still somewhat lacking is in its flight modes as unlike a lot of radios you cannot alter many settings in each flight mode. You can use 5 global variables that can be used to alter settings per flight mode. You can also switch off/on mixer inputs in each flight mode. So you would need one mixer line for camber and one mixer line for reflex and switch them off or on in the relevant flight mode. It would be simpler to change the mixer setting for each flight mode. However, I have heard that this functionality will come in later software releases.

It seems clear the OpenTX software will develop much faster than proprietary systems due to the nature of open source projects. You can actually log feature requests with the development team, which have a good chance of being implemented if they are beneficial.

With regards to the actual TX box, the ergonomics are not that great, with the switches being rather hard to operate. However, there is the prospect of an improved TX from Frsky called the Horus, which doesn't have a realease date yet.

I have programmed one of my f3b models on the Taranis and am waiting for a trimming session before I can use it an actual competition. I will post more on the Taranis in due course. Maybe with some logs of my super low launches. Not that we need a graph to see how rubbish they are!

List of F3B World Champions.

Following the recent F3B World Championship, I thought it would be interesting to try to compile a list of past winners. I managed to get a list of team medals and individual medals up to 2003 from f3b.de. I got recent information from various team pages and blogs etc. The Houlberg trophy itself is nicely pictured by Gordon Buckland in the USA F3B blog.

If you look at the list it includes some well known figures and absolute soaring legends. And Dave Worall and Steve Haley!

Individual - Houlberg Trophy

Year	Country/Place	1st	2nd	3rd
1977	RSA-Verwoerdburg	Skip Miller (USA)	Fricki Roos (RSA)	Sean Bannister (GBR)
1979	BEL - Amay	Anton Wackerle (AUT)	Ralf Decker (GER)	Roy Spavins (RSA)
1981	USA - Sacramento	Dwight Holley (USA)	Sean Bannister (GBR)	Schaefer (GER)
1983	GBR - York	Ralf Decker (GER)	Helmut Quabeck (GER)	David Worall (GBR)
1985	AUS - Waikerie	Ralf Decker (GER)	David Worall (GBR)	Karl Wasner (AUT)
1987	GER - Osnabruck	Reinhard Liese (GER)	Peter Hoffmann (AUT)	Samuele Vilani (ITA)
1989	FRA - Melun	Nic Wright (GBR)	Peter Hoffmann (AUT)	Joris ten Holt (NED)
1991	NED - Terlet	Joe Wurts (USA)	Daryl Perkins (USA)	Stephen Haley (GBR)
1993	ISR - Kefar Sava	Denis Duchesne (BEL)	Joe Wurts (USA)	Klaus Kowalski (GER)
1995	ROM - Brasov	Daryl Perkins (USA)	Denis Duchesne (BEL)	Joe Wurts (USA)
1997	TUR - Ankara	Daryl Perkins (USA)	Pasi Vaisanen (SWE)	Joakim Stahl (SWE)
1999	RSA - Rustenberg	Daryl Perkins (USA)	Dieter Perlick (GER)	Roland Hofmann (SUI)
2001	CZE - Chrudim	Daryl Perkins (USA)	Joe Wurts (USA)	Stefan Knechtie (SUI)
2003	GER - Kirchheim	Andreas Bohlen (SUI)	Pasi Vaisanen (SWE)	Reinard Liese (GER)
2005	FIN-Lappeenranta	Andreas Bohlen (SUI)	Andreas Herrig (GER)	Reinard Liese (GER)
2007	SUI - Emmen	Martin Herrig (GER)	Andreas Herrig (GER)	Fidel Frick (LIE)
2009	CZE - Brno	Martin Herrig (GER)	Peter Hubbertz (GER)	Christian Müller (SUI)
2011	CHN - Laiwu	Andreas Herrig (GER)	Martin Herrig (GER)	Andreas Kunz (GER)
2013	GER - Nardt	Andreas Herrig (GER)	Martin Herrig (GER)	Thomas Dylla (GER)
2015	NED - Deelen	Martin Herrig (GER)	Andreas Herrig (GER)	Andreas Bohlen (SUI)

Teams - Challenge Baron Mike Donnet

Year	Country/Place	1st	2nd	3rd
1977	RSA - Verwoerdburg	USA	UK	AUS
1979	BEL - Amay	South Africa	Austria	Germany
1981	USA - Sacremento	Germany	USA	South Africa
1983	UK - York	Germany	UK	Austria
1985	AUS - Waikerie	UK	Germany	Austria
1987	GER - Osnabruck	Austria	UK	Germany
1989	FRA - Melun	Austria	Netherlands	Germany
1991	NED - Terlet	Germany	UK	USA
1993	ISR - Kefar Sava	Germany	Austria	USA
1995	ROM - Brasov	USA	Germany	Austria
1997	TUR - Ankara	Sweden	UK	USA
1999	RSA - Rustenberg	Switzerland	Germany	France
2001	CZE - Chrudim	Switzerland	Germany	Sweden
2003	GER - Kirchheim	Switzerland	Germany	Sweden
2005	FIN - Lappeenranta	Germany	Sweden	USA
2007	SUI - Switzerland	Germany	Switzerland	USA
2009	CZE - Brno	Germany	Switzerland	Austria
2011	CHN - Laiwu	Germany	USA	France
2013	GER - Nardt	Germany	Austria	USA
2015	NED - Deleen	Germany	Switzerland	Sweden

Here is an Olympic style medal table for the Individual results. 3 points for 1st, 2 for 2nd and 1 for 3rd. Germany includes results from FRG (West Germany). In the case of draws I separate by most gold, or most silvers if golds are even. I include the number of medals won.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Medals	Points
Germany	8	9	6	23	48
USA	7	3	1	11	28
Switzerland	2	0	4	6	10
UK	1	2	3	6	10
Austria	1	2	1	4	8
Belgium	1	1	0	2	5
Sweden	0	2	1	3	5
South Africa	0	1	1	2	3
Italy	0	0	1	1	1
Netherlands	0	0	1	1	1
Liechtenstein	0	0	1	1	1

Medal table for teams.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Medals	Points
Germany	10	5	2	17	42
Switzerland	3	3	0	6	20
Austria	2	3	4	8	16
USA	2	2	6	10	16
UK	1	5	0	6	13
Sweden	1	1	3	5	8
South Africa	1	0	1	2	4
Netherlands	0	2	0	1	2
France	0	0	2	2	2
Australia	0	0	1	1	1