National Free Flight Society

SEN 3125

  1. Euro Drone Sticker
  2. Four Days in Denver
  3. World or Guinness Record

Euro Drone Sticker

From World Champs Organizer:

UAS Number in France for Non-European competitors:
Due to the number of questions on this issue and following Tony Matthews memo on SEN 3124, The world Champ organization decided to have stickers available for non-European competitors to be affixed during the World Champs registration process.

Sorry for any inconvenience which may have resulted from this issue.

Richard Nouvian


 

 Four Days in Denver

From: Don Deloach

Sept 1 – F1E World Cup at the best slope site in the U.S.
Sept 2-3 – FAI Dynasty Cup (AmCup)
Sept 2-4 – 57th Rocky Mountain FF Champs (NatCup Exempt)
Sept 3-4 – Ruckus in the Rockies FFHLG composite event

C’mon Californians and others locked in by heat waves and your reluctance to travel… Get out of your comfort zones and come to COOL Colorado at Labor Day. We have the largest flying site in the western hemisphere (22,000 acres), free camping and world famous hospitality. The MMM Club needs your support!

—DD, CD


 

World or Guinness Record

With reference to the above Colorado Event there has been a  series of postings on the Free Flight group on the FB by Joshua Finn showing an oversize Dawn Mulvihill model that Josh and some friends are looking at breaking the World (FAI/CIAM) and Guinness record at that event.

There has also been a you tube posting by another flyer showing a 16 foot span rubber model that they plan to break a World, Guinness and You Tube record.  This team made an appearance at Perris a week or so ago. This model was nicely built but did not have enough power to fly. It had flown a little before at another site but not really properly. The flyer thought that the super sport rubber did not have enough torque and was going to go back to silicone tube used in spearguns.   As a gum bander I thought not the right length motor and not enough turns.

Some observations: Josh and his team are experienced free flighters and know a lot about performance rubber models. The 16 footer guy does not have a strong free flight rubber back ground, the model is well built and uses some modern techniques and prop designed by an engineering friend with a lot of experience in prop design but not in the modelling field.  So this group has a longer learning curve.

The next question is what World Record.  The FAI is the official air sport body and has rules for “World records”  I did go on the Guinness site and found that the World Duration record for a rubber powered  model is 2 min 7.37 sec, hmmm
The FAI web site has the F1 Open Rubber Duration record 1 h 41 min 32 sec
Date 19 Jun 1964
Course / Location
Dubrovitski Airfield (USSR)
Claimant
Valery Fiodorov (URS)

and a picture shows a very patched F1B of the period.

Note that the FAI/CIAM says this is the F1Open record. That means it does not have to be a F1B spec model. So the Josh model is probably Ok, Maybe the 16 footer is bigger in size or weight than what the FAI/CIAM considers to be a model.

There is also an altitude and speed record, none of these seem to be made for speed and the FAA or similar might have issues on altitude.

Now to the big question ( this is an elephant in the corner for F1ABCPQ etc. competition) is how to you organize the record attempt, with certified stop watches, officials  and timer following  the CIAM requirement.  There is a form on the FAI web site you need to fill in.

The Elephant is an English language expression for something that everyone knows about but no one wants to talk about.  In this case it is that it is easy for performance models to outfly our flying sites and our ability to time them.

Have not seen the Guinness form yet.

So maybe this is another reason to go to the MMM event ?
What next ?