F3F World Championship
Hot competition in a cold climate.
The most recent World Championship in F3F was held in Germany back in 2018 and in 2020 it was going to France but a virus threw a very big spanner into the cogs! After postponing the 2020 competition to 2021 it was eventually canceled and according to schedule the 2022 event was held in Denmark. But all is not lost as in 2024 the World Championship will head to France!
The dates for the 2022 World Championship in F3F were October 2nd to 8th but the first contestants arrived in Denmark as early as the beginning of September with most arriving the week before to get some practice before the big event. As in previous competitions we would be flying in the north west of Jutland near Hanstholm. A total of 54 contestants from 17 nations were registered, of them two were juniors, Mikkel Krogh Petersen from Denmark and Michał Główka from Poland, and Katja Holstein from Germany who was the solo female contestant.
As usual there was a pre-contest scheduled the weekend before the World Championship and although it was open for all only 55 pilots were registered as some of the teams used the two days for practice. Saturday started a bit wet so flying didn’t start until 15:30 and only one round was flown. Sunday was better and three more rounds were added for a total of four rounds. The fastest times of the rounds were: 48.05, 42.58, 40.34 and 35.02 respectively.
After finishing the pre-contest a team managers meeting was held by the organisers and later in the evening the opening ceremony of the World Championship was held at the Hanstholm Lighthouse along with a prize giving ceremony for the pre-contest.
Day 1 was flown at the Mors slope which is a low coastal slope, wind was around 10 m/s and was pretty much constant through the day. Five rounds were flown the first day making it a legal competition as four are needed for that. The competition was fierce and both Søren Krogh from Denmark and Thorsten Folkers from Germany managed to win two rounds each. The fastest times were: 37.10, 39.29, 40.33, 41.51 and 39.44 respectively
Day 2 was flown at Brunbjerg slope which is inland where thermals can come by and then you better be ready to use the extra power! Four rounds were flown with the sixth round starting off with 4–5 m/s wind and then progressively picking up speed up to about 11 m/s. So for 41 pilots this was a zero round with times from 74.73 to 39.91. The fastest times were: 39.91, 34.50, 34.08 and 33.17 respectively.
Day 3 started off very wet so the first pilot briefing was held at the parking lot at 8:30 and then every hour until 10:30 when the day was called off. In the evening there was a social gathering with great food and much mingling plus a technical meeting.
Day 4 was going to be flown at a new slope called Kallerup that was only made available for this World Championship. It is a low coastal slope with a very interesting shape. The pilot stands on the edge with the slope going inwards on either side forming a double bowl with the pilot in the center. To say that it was lively would be an understatement as it was blowing around 17 m/s when we arrived and the wind picked up as the day progressed with gusts around 27 m/s. Thankfully the landing area was wide and close to 500 meters in length but it made for interesting approaches as most of the gliders were ballasted at or close to maximum flying weight. Three rounds were flown and the fastest times were: 33.91, 31.15 and 34.22 respectively. Pilots from team Austria split the three rounds between them with Lukas Gaubatz, Philipp Stary and Martin Ziegler each winning one round.
Day 5 was flown at Kallerup but with a bit less wind this time but not by much. The day was pretty much uneventful and pilots continued to battle the elements, some more than others! Pierre Rondel had the misfortune to land his Wasabi in the sea after some disagreement with the air but luckily Per Hinrichsen who is one of the helpers is used to swimming in the sea so he went after it and got it back to dry land. Four rounds were flown and the fastest times were: 36.77, 35.11, 31.95 and 32.66 respectively.
Day 6 was back at Mors so we got to close the event right where it started. A few rain showers came by during the first half of the day so Round 17 took a bit longer to finish so after starting Round 18 it was clear that it would be the last one of this competition. The wind started out around 6 m/s and then went up to about 10 m/s. The fastest times were: 49.69 and 42.30 respectively
The competition was fierce with pilots moving up and down the ladder while some seemed glued to their place. From Round 6 to 15 Thorsten Folkers was in first place with Philipp Stary in second place from round 8 to 15. In Round 16 they switched places, again in Round 17 and then finally in Round 18.
Philipp Stary from Austria is the new F3F World Championship with 15,270 points and in second place Thorsten Folkers from Germany with 15,172 points, a difference of 98 points out of 16,000 total points or 0.61%. In third place Sebastien Lanes from France with 14,616 points. In the junior category Mikkel Krogh Petersen from Denmark is in first place followed by Michał Główka in second place. It will be interesting to follow their progress over the next few years. For the first time there was a female category in the World Championship and Katja Holstein from Germany had that honour, hopefully it’s just the beginning and we’ll see more female pilots over the next few years.
The Freestyler 6 was noticeably the most popular model but there were also Device, Vantage, Wasabi, Shinto, Respect, Pitbull, Pike Precision, V-JX, Neo, Grane, Vængur and Quantum to name a few. The V-JX is an interesting open source project of Jochen Guenzel and Mario Perner with members of both the Austrian and German team flying it. See link to their project repository in Resources, below.
Last but not least the organisers and staff! The organisation of the event was top notch with everything running smoothly with the staff and helpers on top of their games and obviously not their first rodeo. 972 flights in five-and-a-half days is no mean feat which they pulled off admirably in conditions from 3 to 25 m/s!
See you all in France in 2024!
©2022 Sverrir Gunnlaugsson
Resources
- F3F World Championship 2022 organizers official website. — “The 2022 F3F World Championship is organised by Modelflyvning Danmark in association with the Royal Danish Aeroclub (KDA) from 2nd of October to 8th 2022.…”
- Complete Competition Results as reported on F3XVault.
- Video: F3F World Championship 2022 official video by Christian Gøbel.
- Playlist: F3F World Championship 2022 additional videos by the author.
- Project V-JX — “V-JX is a common project of Jochen Guenzel and Mario Perner where Jochen focuses on aerodynamic design and Mario on engineering and building of the model. Within this [GitHub] repository, we want to make a ‘full stack description’ — from the aerodynamic design to the final build out of moulds…”
All images by the author unless otherwise noted. Read the next article in this issue, return to the previous article in this issue or go to the table of contents. A PDF version of this article, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
