Iceland Open F3F 2023
Challenging, chilly conditions lead to a top five sweep by the British contingent.
Saturday April 29, 2023 started off bright and early with blue skies and temperatures getting close to freezing but with the wind blowing straight on the slope in Helgafell. We were bothered in the beginning by a faulty audio jack on the CD’s (contest director) computer but after finding out what the problem was we managed to ‘hot fix’ it so the rest of the day went by without too much trouble.
Due to that problem the first round took some time to finish with re-flights but later rounds were done much more quickly. We got two flights under 40 seconds with the fastest time of the day 38.41s — and the entire competition as it turns out— flown by Andy Burgoyne in Round 3. In the end we managed to fly seven rounds before the cutoff at 1700 hours. The evening was well spent fixing the audio jack on the CD computer.
Sunday the 30th also started off bright and blue but quite a bit warmer with temperatures around 5C. The wind was going strong on the slope and the first rounds went quite well. The fix to the audio jack worked very well and gave us no further problems. Rounds 8 and 9 went by quickly but as Round 10 progressed we started to see lower wind speeds and the flight times climbing up but thermals came by quite often. However, we managed to finish the round and after a briefing we moved up the lunchtime and waited to see if the wind would steady again.
After lunch it looked like the wind was picking up so Peter Gunning was sent off to start Round 11. As he was launched off the edge though, the wind died down and you could see him go down, down and down some more. Thanks to some good piloting on Peter’s behalf he managed to stay up, finding a thermal and getting back to land after about four minutes. As the weather didn’t seem to be picking up in the next hour we had a briefing and called it a day around 1400.
The forecast for Monday was highly variable with no wind from all directions — thanks Erik! — so early on in the morning we drove to Helgafell as that was the most likely spot based on the current measurements of the weather.
Lo and behold when we got there the wind was blowing straight on to the slope so our spirits were lifted quite literally by that. While setting up the course the pilots started showing up but the wind started shifting and dying down with lots of thermal activity. After waiting to see if it would pick up the CD decided to call it a day.
The awards were handed out at the bottom of the slope with the first place trophy going to England with John Phillips.
The globetrotters of this event were Tomas (Shao Yuan) Liu and Lu Hung Jen from Taiwan and Masanori Ichikawa from Japan — they endured a 40 hour trip to get halfway across the globe to fly with us!
Thanks to all who attended the event in 2023 and hope to see you on an Icelandic slope in 2025!
©2023 Sverrir Gunnlaugsson
Resources
- Iceland Open F3F 2023 organizers official website. — This event is organised in conjunction with the Flugmódelfélagið Þytur (Tytur Aviation Model Association).
- Iceland Open F3F 2023 on Facebook.
- Complete Competition Results as reported on F3XVault.
- Iceland Open F3F 2023 — The Slideshow on YouTube. — Lots more photos of the event plus a great soundtrack for your viewing pleasure!
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