FF Duration
Louis Joyner [[email protected]]
US FF team scores big at the World Championships!
(Editor’s note: You are reading a special edition of the “Free Flight Duration” column. We wanted to bring you some coverage of the recent Free Flight World Championships contested in Argentina. Our US team did extremely well there, and we have asked Tiffany O’Dell to write a report on it.
Our congratulations go out to the entire team. Well done, all!)
THE US FF TEAM survived cold weather, strong winds, and a foodborne illness to post its best-ever finish at the Free Flight World Championships in Embalse, Argentina, May 24–27, 2005.
Mike McKeever started by winning the F1A Glider world title. The F1B Wakefield and F1C Power teams kept up the momentum by winning team titles, while Randy Archer finished second in the Power competition and Alex Andriukov finished third in Wakefield. The US team mounted the podium for five of the six ceremonies at the final banquet.
The temperature the morning of the flyoff for the Embalse World Cup, a few days before the World Championships, was 17°C. Conditions varied during that competition, which was a warm-up for the World Championships.
There were strong winds on F1A day, but the next day was warm and calm with huge thermals and downdrafts for the F1C and F1B fliers. The experience helped the US team, which gained knowledge of the local flying conditions.
The first day of the World Championships found vehicles on the road ahead turning into a different field from the one most fliers had practiced on near the La Cruz air base. The sudden change didn’t throw the competitors, who all found the right field by the time the Glider competition started at 8:30 a.m.
The US F1A team of Mike McKeever, Jim Parker, and Ken Bauer made the four-minute supermax in the first round of Glider, but conditions worsened as the day wore on, with the wind picking up and carrying models far downwind and sometimes tumbling them on the ground.
Ken, who joined the team a few weeks before the competition when Martyn Cowley learned he couldn’t compete because of recent knee surgery, struggled to adjust to the windy conditions that began in the second round. He dropped time in the second, third, and fourth rounds. He knew his weakness was flying in the wind, but the days between the windy World Cup contest and the World Championships were calm, leaving no chance to perfect his windy flying.
Mike struggled to keep his models in one piece during F1A day. He was repairing holes in the wing covering after the early rounds and later learned that one of his short-wing airplanes was damaged in the fourth round when it tumbled on the ground. The tailboom was broken, leaving him with only one short-wing model capable of dealing with the windy conditions.
“If I break another one, I’m done,” said Mike.
Some teams had models land inside a nuclear plant’s fence or in a large nearby lake formed by five dammed rivers. But even when Mike’s airplane became a speck in the sky after launching in a thermal in the fifth round, he still landed short of the lake.
He was afraid he might have missed the air in the seventh round, letting out a yell when he launched, but his model easily maxed for a clean score and a spot in the flyoffs. Jim also maxed, and two of the 15 contestants in the flyoff were from the US.
“That’s a pretty hard day for Glider,” said Team Manager Blake Jensen. “Fifteen of 75 is a pretty hard cut.”
Jim escaped from a tangle and ran over to where someone launched into a thermal in the flyoff. He launched nearby, but his model did only 3:37 in the five-minute round for 12th place.
Mike launched later in the 10-minute window and maxed easily. He was joined by nine other fliers in the seven-minute flyoff that began at roughly 6 p.m., after the temperature started to drop.
Mike decided to use his long-winged model because he felt there wouldn't be thermals in the cool conditions. He towed upwind at the horn and launched early in the round. Ukraine’s Victor Stamov, who builds the models that Mike uses, fell down and then got back up and tried to launch in Mike’s air. It was a good idea because Mike posted the best time—a 4:55—to win the F1A championship.
“I wasn’t nervous,” said Mike. “I launched it and I didn’t look back. I’m happy with what it did. It’s hard to believe.”
Slovenia’s Roland Koglot finished second with a time of 4:42, while France’s Francois Moreau took third with 4:35. Victor Stamov tied for fourth place with his teammate Vladislav Lazarevich at 4:26.
Ukraine put all three of its fliers into the flyoff to win the F1A team championship. Sweden dropped 1:58 for second, and Great Britain finished third, six seconds behind the Swedes. The US team finished just 26 seconds behind Great Britain, which was good for fifth place.
The US F1B team of Alex Andriukov, Roger Morrell, and Bob Tymchek started its day by making the five-minute supermax. That was just the beginning of the trio’s run of perfect scores, despite some scary moments during the exceedingly windy day. The Glider team and other supporters were sent scrambling across the large field chasing the Wakefield models. Obstacles including crops, fences, and ditches kept the team members from following the models straight on motorcycles. Instead, other team members used binoculars to watch the airplanes land and talked the chasers to the model with radios.
Blake and Roger worked out a system to pick thermals in the windy conditions. Those two and Roger’s friend John Malkin watched an electronic thermistor Dick Wood built that Roger brought in conjunction with a sensitive anemometer to mark the thermals.
It was time to fly when the peak of temperature was the right amplitude and was accompanied by a drop in wind velocity to single-digit mph. The window was short and the fliers learned that they had to launch quickly when the conditions were right.
This helped Roger put his model into booming thermals all day. A few dodgy launches by the fliers still ended with maxes because the air was good enough to make up for those mistakes. This was first demonstrated in the fourth round, when Alex picked a lull and launched, but his model shot off to the left and then onto its back before recovering and maxing.
Bob had a motor break in his model while he added a few hand turns before launching in the fourth round. He wound his backup model and managed to launch and max with 25 minutes left in the 55-minute round.
However, the fifth round proved difficult for him. After Roger picked another big thermal, Bob launched his model sideways and watched it skim over the line no more than 15 feet high before it turned downwind and gained altitude.
“If he gets any help at all, he’ll make it,” said Randy Archer.
The model did find lift and maxed fairly easily despite testing the US team’s nerves. That positive outcome was followed by the news that Roger’s airplane’s tailboom had broken when it landed downwind.
His trouble came in the seventh round when he launched his airplane straight up and watched it climb high, only to see it slide back and swoop to within 10 feet of the ground. It pulled out and started a slow climb with a few seconds left on its propeller run.
Blake knew the team would win if all three fliers maxed the last round. The near crash had him sweating for a few moments.
“I looked at my stopwatch, and I was so confident in the air that we picked that I knew the remaining 15 seconds of prop run would be enough to get the model 50 to 75 feet high and the thermal would do the rest,” he said.
It did, and Roger maxed along with the other two team members to give the US its first Wakefield title since 1959. The US fliers were joined by eight others for the flyoff, which windy conditions postponed until the next morning. Roger clipped a fence and finished seventh with 5:26, and Bob took sixth at 5:28.
Mike McKeever watched Alex’s model land in a tree at six minutes, maybe stealing a better finish from the three-time world champion. Volodymyr Vivchar took second place, after some timing confusion, at 6:03, while Oleg Kulakovsky won his third World Championship with a time of 6:16.
Two of Volodymyr’s timers clicked off their watches when his airplane went behind a bus, but the third counted down and then continued timing when the model came back into view. The organizers decided not to average those times, giving him his correct time.
The Ukrainian team took second place in the team standings—34 seconds behind the US. Russia finished third.
The F1C team of Randy Archer, Ken Happersett, and John Warren had to survive a different kind of tension to make their five-minute supermaxes the next morning. The wind had switched, sending the models over the nearby road and some large power poles, and up a small hill. This led to Ken’s airplane being timed at 5:04 when it landed near the top of the hill.
However, all US fliers made the time and then survived another scare when Randy Archer was timed for an overrun after a beautiful launch in the third round. The team scrambled to get the other fliers launched, and then Randy waited for some good air for his second attempt.
He tried to launch with approximately 10 minutes left in the round, but he couldn’t get his engine started. There was a short in the glow-plug leads. John Warren and supporter Jack Greening brought another starter over with 10 minutes left in the round. Randy finally got the engine running and launched with five minutes left, and he maxed.
Blake Jensen had Wakefield team members Roger Morrell and Bob Tymchek help pick air during the tricky rounds for the Power fliers. The strategy paid off; all three made the flyoff, which included only nine other fliers. But that didn’t mean the US team had wrapped up the top prize. Ukraine also had three fliers in the flyoff.
All six made the five-minute max in the first flyoff, and the tension mounted for the seven-minute flight. John had to put up a second flight after he was timed for an overrun, but that one turned out better and it looked as if he might make the seven minutes.
However, the horizon became hazy and the timers lost his model at 6:22, good for 10th place. Ken was close as well, but he was clicked off at 6:53 for sixth place.
Randy’s launch was perfect and he made the final flyoff along with four other fliers, including Ukrainian Eugene Verbitsky. John and Ken placed one spot ahead of a Ukrainian flier, which meant that Randy needed to stay within two spots of Eugene to give the US team another first place.
The final flyoff was set for the next morning, during which the wind was blowing the models over the road and the power lines.
Russia’s Leonid Fuzeye, the reigning World Champion, went with approximately three minutes left but was timed for an overrun. Randy struggled to start his engine in the cold, got it going, and launched with roughly 1:30 left in the round. Leonid tried to get his backup model into the air in time, but he launched after the horn.
The team championship was wrapped up when Eugene Verbitsky landed in 6:50, while Randy did 7:10. However, hopes of Randy’s taking home the individual Gold were dashed when Japan’s Shigeru Kanegawa—who used a Nelson Hummer engine with Ackerberg wings, a Verbitsky stabilizer, and a Ken Oliver fuselage—did 8:08 for the win.
It was difficult for much of the US team to enjoy the closing ceremonies. Many were too sick to take off their jackets at the banquet tables, and climbing up onto the podium was a major feat.
The ill team members later learned that they had campylobacter from undercooked chicken. The symptoms of high fever, diarrhea, and aches had already hit team members at the second day of competition; fortunately no one was too sick to fly. A course of antibiotics cured those who were lucky enough to have the drugs with them. MA
FF Duration
Louis Joyner
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
