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USA FF Team 2025 WC Blog

The rest of the story.

Taking part in a World Champs is complicated and there are lots of moving parts and communications between team members is very important.  Now with the option on an extra team member if one is female and the addition of F1Q that is even more people.  The USA Team and some other have found that using the popular mobile communications App, WhatsApp a very useful communications tool and it is not dependant on a particular communication company or type of hardware. So they use it for Team Communications.  This year the USA team is grateful for the support they have received so decided to do a real time blog to report back back to their supporters. They are running this on WhatsApp and it has reports and photos and in in real time.  In SEN we do not do photos but we have got pemission to include the Text from this blog.  So this won’t in real time and not pictures but never the less lots of interesting information and you don’t need WhatsApp. But if you want  the real thing you can always sign up as a USA Team Supporter and we will explain how to do that later.

So what you are going to see in this edition some of the information of the USA Team’s travels to Europe up to the point where they arrived at Salonta.
7/9/2025
Created by Tiffaney

[Tiffaney]
Hello everyone and welcome to the blog. Thanks for supporting our efforts.

Wheels up at 7 a.m. Travel happinesss is going from overburdened in picture 1, through security to relaxed and waiting at the gate in picture 2

[Janna Van nest]

That’s always a good feeling and relief knowing you were on time and everything passed inspection. Good Luck and most important have a good time

[Tiffaney]

At Chicago O’Hare. Air Tags say bags made it. Stopped off for a Cuban sandwich and veggie wrap, wow those airport prices! ($30 for two beers ??.) Looking forward to Romanian affordability. Wheels up in less than an hour.

7/11/2025
[Tiffaney]
Stopped for lunch at Lake Balaton on our way to Croatia for two World Cup contests before the WC. The normally warm and sunny vacation spot was cool and windy.

Arrived at our Croatian hotel and conducting a taste test of local beers. I’m ready for a good night sleep before we test fly tomorrow.

7/12/2025
[Tiffaney]
The happenings of today

It was just Tia Zheng’s family and supporters and ourselves in Korenica, Croatia, this morning, so we met for breakfast before heading to the field. It is the same site where the World Champs were held in 2009, but it was a good thing Jackie Wang and Tia’s other supporters are good at following GPS coordinates, because it was difficult to locate. Guy Mennano and Todd Reynolds drove past the field entrance a few times before calling for help. By the time we left the field after a day of testing, signs were up marking the entrance. Tia was nervous at first, not having flown since February with her school taking up her time, but she put in enough flights that she was back in the flow by the end of the day. Blake got a few flights in as well, since he’ll be competing in these World Cups. It was a good day to figure out air picking. There were groups of cars and flyers scattered around the field, separated by some larger bushes and a herd of cattle. Guy and Todd arrived at the same time their F1C fuel was delivered and managed to run their engines and get a couple flights in. Todd was excited to make his first flight outside of North America. The weather was sunny, slightly breezy, but the wind mostly followed the thermals. At one point it seemed it might get difficult, but it calmed down again. Chasing was done on foot, but most flights were DT’d early, so no long chases. Andrew Barron, Ken Bauer, Bernard Guest and Alex Andriukov arrived late, but in time to get testing done.
Tomorrow is the first of two contest days, and after a few sprinkles at dinner tonight, the weather might have a few surprises for us.

7/13/2025
[Tiffaney]
Blake and Bernard make the flyoff in the FF Cro Cup. Tricky conditions, especially in the morning with a dew-drenched field leading to a 4:01 by Tia, who climbed high, and a 3:24 by Alex, who launched seeing how high her model climbed. The rest of the day was also difficult, with Tia missing a small piece of air and dropping the fourth round.
F1A had it tougher with calm conditions making it hard to launch models. Once off the line, they frequently came down short of the 4-minute maxes in the first two rounds.
11 of 20 maxed out in B, 12 of 37 in A none in C with Todd taking second and two maxing out in Q.
Blake had a little trouble finding his model after the fifth round, but Bernard’s model didn’t come down after DT’ing and the MiniNeuron quit broadcasting, but he will attempt to retrieve with Tia’s line.

We had a difficult end to our day. Blake missed some early air in the flyoff round and launched before the second good batch to take eighth. Bernard went at the end of the round and the finished sixth. However, Guy got an accidental zero score fixed and ended up third, so two on the F1C podium. We ended on a bummer though with Blake losing our rental car keys. An issue to resolve tomorrow. Wish us luck searching for a small black square in tall green grass.

Found the keys! Blake gets to fly today after all. ??

7/14/2025
[Tiffaney]
Flash: Alex won the second Croatian World Cup. Tia was second junior, fourth overall. Guy was second in F1C, Jama Danier won F1A, Andrew was fourth.

7/15/2025

[Tiffaney]

Made it to Roumania

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