Radio Control Scale-2004/12

102 MODEL AVIATION
BY SOME MODELERS’ standards, the
best-kept secret in the Scale community is
the FAI Scale World Championships. This
column will cover the 2004 edition held in
Deblin, Poland, July 23-August 1, and the
team who went there to represent the United
States of America, AMA, their local clubs,
and all of us. This might get your
competitive and patriotic juices flowing to
try this “Olympics of Scale Competition.”
Some potential competitors and the more
curious Scale modelers think it’s too
expensive to go to a World Championships.
That isn’t true. If you are going as a
competitor and don’t take someone, such as
a spouse, with you, the World
Championships would cost you roughly the
same as going to a regional Scale contest.
With a traveling partner, the same event will
cost you an extra airplane ticket and lodging.
Some members of this year’s team who
didn’t take their wives said they weren’t out
any expenses!
The reason for the low cost of an
international contest such as the World
Championships is the funds raised for the
team and help from AMA. The Scale SIG—
the National Association of Scale
Aeromodelers—helped raise money, as did
Team USA, Team Manager Lloyd Roberts,
and a host of sponsors I will list later. There
was a great deal of fund-raising going on in
the past two years.
To participate, you have to have a current
passport, build your own model, and have a
model box (to transport the model in). The
F4C aircraft have a weight limit of 15
kilograms or 33 pounds, effective January
Stan Alexander, 3709 Valley Ridge Dr., Nashville TN 37211; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL SCALE
US team member Manny Sousa holds his Culver Cadet on the
nose for the static judges while they scrutinize the outline.
Andreas Luthi’s winning Bücker Jungmeister. The Swiss took
home the individual and team Gold Medals.
The Spanish team brought two aircraft to compete with this year,
including this Bristol F2B by Arturo La Rocha De Torres.
Wolfgang Niederstrasser’s wife with Bücker Jungmeister
powered by a Seidel seven-cylinder radial. He finished fifth.
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December 2004 103
2005. An extra .03 pound is allowable, but
you don’t want to be that close to the limit
if you can help it. Some modelers have
been seen gutting their models’ scale pilots
and cockpit interiors to adhere to the weight
limit. Fuel isn’t counted as weight.
This year the Aero Club of Poland held the
most elaborate World Championships in
recent years. The many corporate sponsors
included, but were not limited to, LOT
Airlines, Lufthansa, Graupner, Filar, Ford,
Citroen, Skoda, Konspol, and BossAR.
Patrons were also a part of the sponsorship.
Without a doubt, the event could not
have been held without the cooperation and
help from the Polish Air Force with
Brigadier General Tadeusz Kuziora,
General Ryszard Olszewski, Aero Club of
Poland President Jan Tadeusz Karpinski,
and Polish Confederation of Sports
President Andzej Krasnicki. A special
thanks to Dorota and Pawel Wlodarczyk,
who worked for several years to make this
event go off as well as it did.
The event lasted a complete week and
went at a more relaxed pace than here in the
US. Tours for families, dinners, and parties
are part of the event and experience, similar
to an Olympics, but many competitors miss
the importance of the social events at a
World Championships. These are rare
opportunities to meet and talk to people
from numerous other countries. Many
speak English and will try even if you don’t
speak any of their language.
These events were held almost every
night or at special times during the week.
Everyone ate in either the enlisted cafeteria
or the officers’ cafeteria, and the food and
waitresses were great, serving pretty much
whatever you wanted to eat and drink. The
beer in Poland is stronger than ours, at
roughly 8%.
US team member Manny Sousa helped
the team obtain a sort of passport for the
model boxes, and it stated that they would
take the contents back out of the country
that they brought in. This smoothed the way
through customs, here and in Warsaw. The
whole team drove to Chicago, Illinois, and
caught LOT Polish Airlines to Warsaw. The
Manny Sousa (L) holds Al Kretz’s SBD Dauntless while Al gets
ready to start the third round. He finished 23rd.
The only jet entry this year was Australian David Law’s
consistent-flying Vampire Mk T-35. He finished seventh.
flight there and back was on a Boeing 767,
with all of the boxes in the hold.
F4C RC Scale is what I lovingly refer to as
“Museum Scale,” and the models are as good
as you will see anywhere in competition. The
static portion of the competition requires you
to prove—with at least three different photos
of the prototype—that there was or is such a
full-scale aircraft. That is the minimum
needed to compete—not to win! Many
modelers will have as many as six to eight
pages of documentation, along with detail
photos and multiviews.
The flying portion of the event has K
(difficulty) factors attached to different
maneuvers including the takeoff and landing,
which have the highest K factors this year. So
you want to make sure that you make a great
takeoff and landing in the wind. If conditions
are available at an FAI Scale event site, the
pilots are allowed to take off and land into the
wind. It’s impossible at some US sites, but
it’s nice for the competitors if room allows.
A typical flight for an aerobatic aircraft
such as a fighter might include:
1) Takeoff
2) Straight Flight
3) Figure Eight
4) Descending 360 Degree Circle
5) Option: Roll
6) Option: Immelmann Turn
7) Option: Split “S”
8) Option: Half Cuban Eight (Purposebuilt
aircraft such as an Extra 300
would be expected to fly the full Cuban
Eight.)
9) Option: Touch-and-Go
10) Approach and Landing
The judges also give points for a realistic
flight and maneuver choice.
All of the competitors this year knew
exactly where and when their models would
be static-judged and flown; the Aero Club of
Poland kept a strict time limit on all aspects
of the event. This allowed the contestants to
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sit back and watch the rest of the competition
(many took notes) or take a short trip for the
day.
Only one model flies at any given time,
which allows the modeler and the judges to
concentrate on the aircraft and its engine
sound. No one is starting an engine in your
ear while you are trying to fly. The models
were transported around the site by golf cart,
which had a special attachment to
accommodate models of all sizes.
Biplanes have had a hold on the top 10
places in the last several championships. This
year Andreas Luthi of Switzerland finished
first with a Bücker Jungmeister biplane, Max
Merckenschlager was second flying a
Grumman F7F Tigercat, and Swiss
competitor Hans Ammann was third with a
Curtiss Jenny.
The highest-scoring jet this year was
Australian competitor David Law’s de
Havilland Vampire Mk T-35 two-seater,
which finished an impressive seventh place.
There were only two crashes this year: Italian
team member Cesare Cordella’s Macchi
MC.200 Saetta and US team member Charlie
Baker’s Rawdon T-1. Crashes are rare in this
contest, and there were internal problems
with the aircraft that did go in.
A variety of aircraft competed this year,
including a CAC 25 Winjeel, a Halberstadt
CL.IV, a Zlin 526 Akrobat Special, an Avro
504K, a Bristol fighter, an Antonov An-2, a
Potez 62 French transport, a P-61 Black
Widow, several Tiger Moths, a Liberty Sport
biplane, a Morane-Saulnier AI, a Ki-27 Nate,
a Beechcraft TC-45, an SBD Dauntless divebomber,
a de Havilland D.H.1, a Miles Hawk
Major, a Fournier RF-4D motor glider, a
Druine Turbulent, an Fw 190A-6, a North
American Harvard Mk II, a de Havilland
D.H.4, a Vultee BT-13, a Saab 91C “Safir,”
and a Culver Cadet.
The next Scale World Championships will
be held July 14-23, 2006, in Norrköping,
Sweden. This competition is only held
every two years. For more information
about Norrköping, check out the Web site
www.destination.norrkoping.se.
For more information about the USA FAI
Team Selection for Scale, contact Scale
Team Selection Committee Chairman Mike
Gretz at [email protected] or me at the
address in the column header.
For a download of the latest FAI Sporting
Code and a complete listing of the 2004
World Championships results and photos, go
to www.scaleaero.com/amascale.htm and
click on “Tech Resources,” “FAI,” “CIAM,”
“CIAM Documents,” “FAI Sporting Code,”
“Section 4 (Aeromodeling),” then “Scale
Model Aircraft Competitions”—“FAI.” It’s
464 kilobytes, so make sure you have plenty
of paper handy. It’s in Adobe Acrobat.
You can also request a copy from AMA at
(765) 287-1256. Contact Lisa Johnson in the
Competition Department at extension 231.
’Til next month, fair skies and tailwinds. MA