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European Free Flight Championships 2008
By: Martin Dilly
Held at Pazardzhik, Bulgaria in early September, the European Free-Flight Championships saw teams from 31 nations competing in the pure glider, rubber-powered and engine-assisted glider classes.

Alan Jack, Peter Watson and Stafford Screen, flying F1C engine-assisted gliders that climb faster than the Space Shuttle, took the team silver medal for Great Britain. After a summer of poor weather at home that provided little opportunity for the team to do the vital test flying needed to wring the last drop of performance from their spectacular aircraft, the 35 degree temperatures in Bulgaria came as quite a shock.

Like all FAI free-flight competitions, the Championships in Bulgaria require seven flights from each team member; these are normally timed to a maximum of three minutes each, not easy to achieve without the aid of thermals to boost the glide performance. An on-board electronic or clockwork timer upsets the trim of the aircraft to bring it safely down after the three minute ‘maximum’. Alan and Stafford both had full scores after seven rounds, but in the tie-breaking fly-off, with the maximum increased to five minutes, Alan dropped by a heartbreaking one second, to miss the final seven minute fly-off. The Hungarian team of Bauer, Zsengeller and Patocs took the team gold convincingly by placing second, third and fourth.

Flight duration is the sole aim in free-flight competition, the oldest form of model flying, and no radio-control is allowed or indeed needed. The rules for the engine-assisted gliders require a minimum weight, a maximum wing area and a maximum size of 2.5 cubic centimetres for the engine, allowed to run for only five seconds. The design challenge is thus to build an aircraft that climbs as high as possible so as to glide for the maximum time.

Composite materials like carbon and Kevlar are widely used in free-flight. The glow-plug engines run at over 30,000 r.p.m. and produce far more power for their size than a Formula One engine and some use a reduction gearbox to allow a larger propeller to be swung. Propeller blades fold back to reduce drag after the engine cuts. Some flyers, like Russia’s Leonid Fuzeev, who won both the 2006 Championships and this year’s event, fly aircraft with folding wings to reduce drag during the vertical climb. Others favour an airfoil section with flaps to vary the camber and thus the lift coefficient between the climb and the glide.

To put the icing on the cake for the nine British flyers, their total score for all three classes beat the 30 other teams to give them the coveted Jack North Trophy. The trophy, presented to the FAI by the British Model Flying Association in 2000, commemorates a pioneering aerodynamicist who worked at the National Physical Laboratory on the Schlieren flow visualisation techniques that led to supersonic flight; Jack was also one of only two people ever to represent Great Britain in all three outdoor free-flight classes.

Russell Peers, Peter Martin and Ray Jones flew rubber-powered aircraft to the F1B or Wakefield specification. The Wakefield Cup is model flying’s oldest international award, and was originated in 1927 by Lord Wakefield of Hythe, founder of Castrol lubricants. The rules define minimum airframe weight, maximum area and maximum weight of the rubber strip motor, - just 30 grammes.

Rubber is an interesting power source. It does not provide a constant power output; the torque of a fully-wound motor drops steeply at first and then ‘plateaus’ at a lower level before finally reducing to a point where the aircraft no longer can climb. To use this varying power as efficiently as possible many competitors use a variable pitch propeller that senses the change in torque, and employ an on-board automatic system to adjust the wing and tailplane incidence and the rudder settings during the climb.

The third class flown at Pazardzhik was for pure gliders, the F1A class. These are launched from a fifty metre towline, and, like the other classes, have limits on wing area and minimum weight. Launching a glider like this is rather like playing a trout; competitors can feel for the thermal on the towline before accelerating to release the glider at a very high airspeed, pulling around 25G. As the glider climbs steeply an on-board timing system then puts positive incidence on the tailplane to pull the aircraft into its glide via a quarter bunt or outside loop, maybe 20-30 metres higher than the towline length.

The British F1A team of Chris Edge, Mike Cook and Peter Williams placed fifth, with Chris and Mike reaching the fly-off.

Launching into a thermal is at the core of free-flight. Sensitive electronic anemometers and thermometers can foretell the arrival of good air and long Mylar streamers on tall poles can show the same thing. This can trigger the launch of ten or twenty aircraft, clawing for altitude in the same thermal.

Free-flight aircraft drift downwind after launch; retrieving them for further flights, with at least seven flights per flyer and a limited time to get back from maybe a mile or more downwind, can be taxing for a team. Most of the aircraft carry a miniature radio location beacon and retrievers use a compass, binoculars and GPS, so the whole retrieval operation is a bit like orienteering. In Bulgaria, even with these aids, the high temperatures made the retrievers’ task an exhausting one.

Results

F1A Glider

1. Lior Bachar Israel 1918 seconds
2. Per Findahl Sweden 1913
3. Juha HeikKinne Finland 1894

Team
1. Israel
2. Hungary
3. France

F1B Rubber-Powered Wakefield

1. Mark Gilad Israel 1962
2. Anatoliy Zastavenko Ukraine 1919
3. Vladislav Urban Czech Rep. 1818

Team
1. Czech Rep.
2. Netherlands
3. Ukraine

F1C Engine-Assisted Gliders

1. Leonid Fuseev Russia 2040
2. Balasz Bauer Hungary 1970
3. Gabor Zsengeller Hungary 1923

Team
1. Hungary
2. Great Britain
3. Italy

Overall Team Classification

1. Great Britain 11622 seconds
2. Israel 11519
3. Ukraine 11518
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