SEN 3361
- Blog about the F1E World Championship
- SEN
- BVLOS
- Re SEN 3360
- World Champs participation
Blog about the F1E World Championship
From: Bernhard Schwendemann
The F1E World Championship for Juniors and Seniors will start on August 11
in Rana (Czech Republic).
The flying days are Tuesday (12.08.) for Juniors and Wednesday (13.08.) for
Seniors.
The German Free Flight Magazine Thermiksense reports about the competitions
in a blog. The blog has already been launched:
https://www.thermiksense.de/2025-f1e-wm-tschechische-republik/
Bernhard Schwendemann
SEN
We have been a bit behind in SEN postings and will catch up with most in this issue
BVLOS
From: Roy E. Smith
Hi Roger,
I was interested to read the unattributed piece on flying BVLOS in SEN 3359 and I have some comments:-
I agree that most fliers do not intend to fly beyond the visual line of sight – but I think some are in favour of that, now that the sensors and telemetry are up to it. I think, however, that we need to keep in mind that we are at the mercy of aviation regulators and their actions can be quite arbitrary if we do not conduct ourselves sensibly. Sometimes we simply have to conduct ourselves prudently in order to avoid unwelcome attention.
It is clear that most of the regulators are concerned with RC models, not Free Flight. In Canada, for instance, the Transport Canada regulations specifically apply only to RPAS – Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems – and do not apply to Free Flight or Control Line. It has been confirmed that this is not just an omission because the regulators did not know about Free Flight – they are very well aware of it – they simply do not perceive Free Flight to be the same level of risk to full-size air operations as RPAS are, and they deliberately excluded Free Flight from the regulations when they were framed. That has been confirmed to me in writing. However, the Model Aeronautics Association of Canada (MAAC), in their greater wisdom, chose to apply the same restrictions to Free Flight models as are regulated by the Canadian Government for RPAS, regardless of the official regulator’s position.
In terms of timing the model – the rules make it clear that the timer may not move beyond a certain distance from the launch point in order to witness the flight of the model so, even though someone who is chasing the model might still have it in sight, the timer does not, so any flight beyond VLOS of the timer is irrelevant anyway. That is where allowing the use of altimeters to record official flight times becomes problematic – it encourages fliers to deliberately fly beyond the VLOS. There could be a rule that the timer must stop the watch once the model has been OOS for more than 10 seconds – which is actually in place in most jurisdictions. With RDT being common, it could be required that the flier (or the retriever) bring the model down when it is declared by the timer to be OOS. Then there is the problem of whether, or not, the timer can actually see the model – knowing that the model cannot be seen by others anyway, would a timer allow added seconds after the OOS became evident before calling for the RDT and having the flight ended.
In my opinion, the writer of the piece identified the real problem in their last sentence, which read – “As long as we have performance aircraft we need to improve our timing.” The real issue is the performance levels of the aircraft being flown, not the problem of measuring flight times. The focus should be on the expertise of the fliers – not how “advanced” the machines that are being flown can be. For many years, as soon as the performance of the models evolved to the point where they frequently exceeded the bounds of the flying fields, and the vision of the time keepers, the specifications were changed to reduce the performance. Higher wing loadings, shorter engine runs, less rubber, and shorter tow lines were the usual ‘fixes’ for the problem. Some time ago we reached the point where those things, however, became impractical choices to restrict the performance in the face of modern materials, manufacturing methods, and other technological ‘advances’. There is a simple remedy, however. If the aspect ratio of the lifting surfaces were limited to, say, 9:1 , then the performance potential would be strictly limited and the problems with timing flights would be eliminated. The contest would still be the means to determine which flier exhibited the most skill at trimming the aeroplane and picking the air in which to launch it – which surely is the point of the exercise, or isn’t it?
This point has been made before by others, as well as by me, but it seems to gain no traction. The great Ed Keck made the same observation a number of years ago. I fear that, if we do not restrict the performance potential of the models we are flying, and especially if we allow them to fly OOS because we can record flight times electronically, without the need to see them, then one group of fliers will be putting the activities of another group at risk. The regulatory authorities may well start to pay more attention to Free Flight activities – there are already some private pilots who think it would be a good idea to shut down the genre altogether – and this could be catastrophic for the whole group of Free Flight modelers. Squeaky wheels often get the grease, rather than being replaced. The fact that Free Flight has an excellent safety record – and presents millions of times lower risk to full-size aircraft than birds do (I actually wrote an article on that a few years ago) – won’t necessarily protect us if our activities start to become worrisome to the regulators.
Roy E. Smith
Re: SEN 3360
From:Ed Carroll
Excuse me, is “allT” not accepted for timing issues?
Eddie
Editors’s reply
Do not understand the question?
The approved devices are the All-Tee and the Neuron. We never said it was not.
The Neuron has the ability to send it’s results to serber on the internet called abouttime.
Flying Neurons that made this available to All-Tee so you CAN send you All-Tee results to this server too.
Here the operative word is CAN … if you want to. However not many people WANT to so they do not. It turns out at the World Champs just past not man people did this. But in the F1B final flyoff 2 Mini Neuron users did so we made some observations about it . I think that one all-Tee user did but it was not such an interesting flight. Several other F1B flyers did but again not such interesting flights. Why don’r other people, the most straightforward answer is because they do have to and it is a distraction in the World Champs. Another reason is because it makes available to the public information about their flight, for example in F1B the length of the motor run that might be giving away secret competitive information. The third reason is that every timing mistake does not give you less time, for example when the timekeeper times the wrong model you could get MORE seconds and then your onboard timing device could be to you disadvantage. In talking with some sportsman they say “I would not want to win that way”. Clearly not all sportsmn think that way!
World Champs participation
From: michael pykelny
Roger: New Zealand and your friends from Australia were no shows.
Reply to Michael
People who live in down under are aware they live quite some distance from where popular events are held and are quite accustomed to travelling longer distances that most other to take part. There are some other advantages in living down there.
BUT That is because they have the highest travel costs and Roumania the worst reputation for running a event. Things like the quality of time keepers etc For example the last minute change in schedule without notification could have been an issue in possibly changing flights – same for USA . So the individual flyers made a choice saying – we do not want to pay all this money to go to an event that will not be well run. One Australian F1B flyer did take part.
also it is a bit of an issue having the Euro Junior champs run concurrently as it lengthens the event and cost.
roger
More from michael pykelny
There was a Juniors airplane midair with mine
More from others
While the Champs went off well there have been adverse comments about the banquet cost, quality of some of the timekeepers and some operational issue such as not moving the line to better accommodate the wind.
SEN Status
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…………..
Roger Morrell