Post by lesterpk on Nov 14, 2007 21:36:03 GMT 12
Reports are in of one of our own forum members being selected as a pilot for next years F3J World Champs in Turkey.
What the hell is F3J you ask?
Its radio controlled thermal soaring. The task is to fly for as long as possible within a 10 minute window, you can't launch before the 10 minutes starts and you must land before the end. Times of 9.55 are not uncommon. The landing task is made a little harder by also getting bonus points for how close you are to the centre of a circle, up to 100 points for less than 1m away, 5 points off every metre after that. Getting the 100 is actually quite easy with practice, doing it in the last half second of the window time isn't.
Gliders are carbon fibre and kevlar mostly, made in moulds and heat cured. Spans are around 3.5m. Launch is by hand tow but with a difference, most teams use a pulley and two people on the line to give a very hard and fast launch, every second spent on the line is a second you can't count toward your flight time.
Each glider costs around $2500 and each team member will take 3 for the contest, on top of this each member needs to raise about $6000-8000 for airfares and expenses, so any forum memebrs who win powerball are asked to keep me in mind
Attached is a pic of the NZ team.
L>R: Sven Zaalberg, Les Stockley (me), Joe Wurts (ex World Champ and newly settled in NZ, Team manager) and Scott Chisholm.
What the hell is F3J you ask?
Its radio controlled thermal soaring. The task is to fly for as long as possible within a 10 minute window, you can't launch before the 10 minutes starts and you must land before the end. Times of 9.55 are not uncommon. The landing task is made a little harder by also getting bonus points for how close you are to the centre of a circle, up to 100 points for less than 1m away, 5 points off every metre after that. Getting the 100 is actually quite easy with practice, doing it in the last half second of the window time isn't.
Gliders are carbon fibre and kevlar mostly, made in moulds and heat cured. Spans are around 3.5m. Launch is by hand tow but with a difference, most teams use a pulley and two people on the line to give a very hard and fast launch, every second spent on the line is a second you can't count toward your flight time.
Each glider costs around $2500 and each team member will take 3 for the contest, on top of this each member needs to raise about $6000-8000 for airfares and expenses, so any forum memebrs who win powerball are asked to keep me in mind
Attached is a pic of the NZ team.
L>R: Sven Zaalberg, Les Stockley (me), Joe Wurts (ex World Champ and newly settled in NZ, Team manager) and Scott Chisholm.
