Jury Report on Free Flight World Championships 1979 F1A F1B F1C
FAI Jury
| Sandy Pimenoff | FIN | President |
| Ian Kaynes | GBR | Member |
| N3 | C3 | Member |
Dates
October 3rd to 10th, 1979.
Location
Taft, California, USA
Participation
Twenty four countries, with 175 contestants, participated including, for the first time, the People’s Republic of China. The Championships would have been larger except that some regularly attending countries did not attend.
Accommodation
Most of the contestants and contest officials were housed in the Bakersfield Inn. However, it was necessary to house a few at two other hotels which were within walking distance. Accommodations were comfortable with each room having its own bath. Transport was quite good, but the distance was a bit far, however, requiring 45 minutes one way.
The catering food service was ample; breakfast was adequate but monotonous, evening meals were poor, monotonous. Field lunches were adequate.
Flying site
The Taft flying site was excellent, though a bit dusty being a desert area.
Weather
Weather for all three days was superlative with very little wind and no rain.
Competition
Processing was reasonably thorough and expeditious. However, a problem resulted in that it was necessary for the contestants to select the three models that they were going to use before they had a chance to participate in the official flight test period. With the consent of the Jury, the team managers agreed unanimously to allow processing and replacement of one additional model prior to the start of the event. It was deemed advisable to do this, even though it was not in strict conformance with the sporting code, so that each contestant could be in a position to do his best. Spot processing was adequately accomplished. Unfortunately the FlB 2nd was disqualified for being underweight and the FlC 3rd was disqualified at the final check for being over the displacement limit. (Rossi engine).
The Contest Organization was very good with excellent timekeeping officials who were all free flighters. Only limited crowd control was exercised, but no problems resulted. Motorcycles were made available to each team for retrieving each day and only a few models were lost as the result of hung up dethermalizers.
The organizers provided a large score board and used a computer for results processing. Copies of results were made available on a timely basis.
Protests
Only one official protest was lodged concerning the displacement measuring process on the check of the 3rd place FlC model. The protest was disallowed.
Observations
A definite plus at this world championships was the publication of a plans book of the models of over 100 contestants, and the conduct of a technical symposium after the competition. Several interesting technical papers were presented and published and a high point was a luncheon address by Dr. Paul McReady on the development and flights of the Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross. Finally, the organizers arranged to measure the altitudes attained by FlA, B and C models during the first round and on some fly—off flights. These data will be published later.
Conclusions
It is the unanimous opinion of the F.A.I. Jury that the 1979 Free Flight World Championships were successfully completed.
Recommendations
- In view of the fact that it was necessary to disqualify two winners for relatively small non—deliberate infractions of the sporting code, it is recommended that the free flight sub—committee undertake the task of finding a way to resolve minor infringement of the specifications without the need to resort to the drastic process of disqualification.
- In view of the fact that problems arose when contestants were required to select their 3 models to be flown before they had a chance to test them, it is recommended that the free—flight sub—committee undertake the task of clarifying the contest procedures, in order to preclude this happening in the future.