Junior Indoor World Championships
The final results are now listed on the FAI web site.
Lou Young has accompanyed Tim Chang to the Indoor World Championships held in Belgrade, Serbia, from August 17 to 22, 2008. More information about this event may be found at the web site of the sponsoring club Aerolux. This is the Olympics of model aviation.
Lou Young and Tim Chang at Moreland Gym a few days before leaving for Serbia.
One of Tim's F1Ds. The model is required to weigh no less than 1.2 grams (a dollar bill weighs 1 gram) and the motor no more than 0.6 grams. Tim's propeller has delicate hinges and a spring mechanism that allows the blades to twist in response to the motor torque, optimizing the blade angle for the varying torque of the propeller.
Lou Young has sent the following reports from Belgrade, Serbia:
Saturday, August 16, 2008.
It's hot here in Serbia, 97 degrees in the flying site, which has round windows all over the roof. Our luggage did not arrive with us so Tim had to borrow a winder, partial rubber motor spacers, torque meter, etc. The US team is here and they rallied 'round and supplied what ever he needed. Most everyone was flying in the Belgrade open that precedes the World Champs. Tim didn't enter that. He got his plane flying well but the drift is hard to figure out. Tomorrow is the official registration day but Tim is registered already and he wants to wait in the hotel because we expect our bags to arrive and he wants to fly with his own stuff that he is familiar with. I want to visit the airplane museum near the airport. The opening ceremony is on Monday. I am taking lots of video and still photos, but you won't see very many because the transmission seems to be very slow.
Sunday, August 17, 2008.
Jean and I went to the Yugoslavia Air Museum while Tim and his mom waited for luggage but finally gave up and went to the flying site so Tim could register. The air museum is super. When we got together with Tim and Mai about supper time we learned that we could pick up the bags at the airport if we got there in a hurry. Mad dash for a taxi to the airport, lots of official business before we could retrieve our bags from heaven knows where. Tim was overjoyed to have all of his stuff and stayed up late, we learned this morning, checking and arranging it. I was overjoyed to have clean underwear.
Belgrade is very pretty with lots of trees. Typical of European cities, the residential areas have occasional mom and pop stores with specialties like flowers sprinkled thinly amongst the residences. The linden trees have their flying (helicoptering) seeds ready to go and I was happy to play with them.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 (corrected) See John Kagan's story in the January 2009 issue of Model Aviation - starts on page 138)
The full results through 4 rounds have been sent by Justin Young's dad. In Senior, Lutz Schramm from Germany set a new international F1D record with a flight of more than 36 minutes in the first round. His airplane is high tech to the max. Elliptical planform built with elliptical dihedral -graphite on spars built in a special mold. The prop outline is molded using graphite and of course is variable pitch. A Slovakian flyer, Ivan Treger, flying a more conventional plane broke Shramm's record in round 2 with a flight that was only 5 seconds longer than Schram's. The American Seniors are having a rough time with steering their airplanes. The drift in the building near the highest point, which is quite flat, is very strong. There are 3 vents around the edge of the center slab that seem to alternately blow in or suck out. Near the floor the air is very turbulent making launch a sporting proposition. John Kagan is the only US senior with good flights above 35 minutes. Jim Richmond has only one good flight on the board with 2 wings badly damaged by ballooning.
Justin Young of US, who is reigning Junior World Champ, flying as the only other US Junior, with Tim Chang, is leading the Junior WC with flights above 34 minutes. Tim had 2 wings broken but has repaired the one he has most experience with. He has one flight of 27 + minutes and one of just over 30 minutes, with a good chance of winning second place behind Justin. An outside chance of beating Justin. The 2 US Juniors would need to score flights perhaps above 36 minutes to achieve second place against the several good teams that have a full 3 members.
The contest organization is OK but because of the high temperatures in the building, the last 2 days rounds have started at 3 PM and ended at midnight. Tomorrow we start at 10 and finish at 6 so we can rush to the banquet and prize giving.
The timekeepers are generally young men and women and are well trained and pay close attention. Unfortunately, everyone except the USA teams smokes and the building reeks. If we ever hold a WC in the US the Europeans may boycott!
The hotel and organizers are feeding us too much. Today the caterers served bean soup for lunch and the resulting emanations were actually preferable to the smoke.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Indoor World Champs Final.
14 countries competed: Britain, USA, Serbia, Czech Republic, Italy, Switzerland, France, Slovak Republic, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, Japan, & Poland.
Senior Team: 1st USA (Kagan, Richmond, Schaefer, Romash manager), 2nd Britain, 3rd Hungary.
Senior Individual: 1st Treger Slovakia, 2nd Schramm Germany, 3rd Kagan USA.
(Schramm set a new FAI record and then Treger broke it. Both got FAI certificates)
Junior Team: 1st Czech Republic, 2nd Poland, 3rd Romania.
Too bad the US couldn't get a 3rd member for the team (politics?) - we probably would have been able to place second.
Junior Individual: 1st Justin Young USA (reigning Junior World Champ), 2nd Timothy Chang USA (and San Jose), 3rd Gabriella Kaplanova Czech Republic.
Justin and Tim were the only Junior flyers whose 2-flight totals were more than 1 hour.
We got to hear the Star Spangled Banner twice and there were no tacky shouts of "USA".
Tim's last round flight looked like it would score pretty close to 34 minutes but it hung up on a piece of rebar sticking down from the ceiling. The US team really acted as a team and helped each other with analysis and flight preparation.