South Africa’s first RC Pilot to receive World
Champion status!!!!
Jason
Weber
After months of preparation
and the qualifying events the South African National Teams were ready to fly to
the 2013 F3K world championship event that was held at Herning in Denmark from
the 21st – 28th July 2013. This was the 2nd
F3K world championship with the first event being held in Sweden in 2011.
Every month we held one
practice day and one competition day and tried to alternate between GEMS
(Bapsfontein) and the Delmas field where the 2012 F3J World Championships were
held. The one exception was when we were hosted by Umhlanga Model Fliers Club,
what an awesome weekend and the members of the club led by Alf Boardman
welcomed us and made us feel right at home. We once again thank the club and
it’s members for the special treatment that we were given.
All
the participating pilots & Club members from Umhlanga Model Fliers Club
Two national teams were
selected following the prescribed qualification and team selection events.
The senior team consisted of Craig Goodrum (2011 F3K team member,
multiple national champion and most experienced SA international glider pilot),
Alan Smith (2011 F3K team member, 2009
World Air Games silver medalist, 2012 F3J team member and multiple national
champion and proficient at many other disciplines), Blake Dormer (new to F3K but experienced F3A and fun fly Pilot) and
Herman Weber – team Manager.
Junior team consisted of Jason Weber (2011 F3K team member, 2011
F3K Euro tour gold medalist, National 2012 F3B champion, 2010 F3J team member,
2011 F3B team member & junior gold medalist and 2012 F3J team silver
medalist), Tshepo Molefe (2010 F3J
team member, 2012 junior national open thermal champion and 2012 F3J team silver
medalist), Wouter Kruger (new to F3K
but experienced power and slope pilot) and Juanita
Smith – Team Manager.
With the new airline rules of
one ‘check in’ piece of luggage we had no problem with model boxes and carried
our clothes and transmitters as hand luggage. The team members flew on
different days and eventually everybody, except Craig, arrived at the
accommodation on Thursday 18th.
What
our Accommodation looked like after unpacking – Roughly 60 planes were with us!!!!
We drove out to the flying
site and met up with the organisers and European competitors that were camping
on the field. Planes were assembled and trimmed for sea level conditions and
practice started in earnest. Craig had arranged for Vladimir’s Models to bring
3 of their latest development models (called the Snipe and designed by Joe
Wurts) to the worlds which we collected and built these on Thursday evening. Sunset
is around 11pm so there is lots of time to practice and little time to sleep.
Craig arrived on Friday
afternoon and met up with the team which had set up base in a large marquee
supplied by the organisers. The team practiced while the team managers
completed the registration formalities and entries for the Swinging Denmark
Euro Tour event. (This is held before the WC and gives all the helpers and
other local pilots an opportunity to fly against the best pilots in the world).
Saturday morning saw the start
of the pre-contest with groups of 12 pilots flying per slot. There were 116
competitors and 10 slots per round. Conditions were sunny and windy. This made
ballast selection critical with many pilots landing out, getting caught
downwind and not being able to penetrate back to the field. The Europeans
showed that local knowledge of the conditions was a big advantage with the
Scandinavian pilots taking the early lead.
By
lunch on Sunday 6 rounds had been flown and the results were as follows:
1 –
Jonas Ekman – Sweden
2 -
Marc Werth – Germany
3 –
Mattias Hammarskiold – Sweden
18 –
Alan Smith
25 –
Craig Goodrum
55 –
Jason Weber
64 –
Blake Dormer
70 –
Wouter Kruger
71 –
Graham Kirkland
93 –
Tshepo Molefe
All
in all we had a much better pre-comp than two years ago.
After
the Swinging Denmark prize giving the WC opening ceremony was held, and with
models processed we went back to our accommodation to prepare for the main
event.
Full
Team
Our
Team Mascot - Kristi
Monday
morning saw the start of the WC. Seniors flew first and
it was quite a tough day for them, but as we know in F3K anything could happen.
Our Juniors flew like stars and we were really proud of the way they flew and
conducted themselves. By the third day we had, Snr’s Blake 10th, Craig 23rd and
Alan 54th (this was after Alan had to do a 2km walk to retrieve a
model). The Juniors are really doing well, Wouter is 2nd, Jason 4th and Tshepo
9th.... Snr’s were sitting 10th as a team overall and Jnrs had just
dropped to 2nd team overall by only 109 points. At this point we were nearly
halfway through the competition.
By
Thursday we were busy with round 13 Craig had moved up to 17, Blake was at 21
and Alan was moving slowly up the to 44, the team had now moved up to 8th
place overall. After 13 rounds the Junior positions were Wouter 1st,
Jason 4th and Tshepo 10th and we stayed at second team
position right to the end of the competition.
The
final placing after the preliminaries were Blake 5th, Craig was 17th
and Alan 37th. As a team the seniors finished 6th out of
29 countries
Sweden
1st
New
Zealand 2nd
USA
3rd
Junior
Group
The
placing for the juniors were Wouter 2nd, Jason 5th and
Tshepo 9th
So
Team standings were
Germany
1st
RSA
2nd
Ukraine
3rd
Junior
Team at Medal Ceremony – Tshepo Molefe, Jason Weber, Juanita Smith and Wouter
Kruger
This
meant that we had three pilots that made it through to the fly-offs, Blake
(Snr), Wouter (Jnr) and Jason (Jnr).
Senior
Fly-Off Group
Our
fly-off day had rain predicted, fortunately the weather never arrived. The guys
all flew like the stars that they are. The seniors had quite an exciting end to
the Fly-offs as there was a joint placing for 1st. After a sudden
death fly off between the two top pilots the final positions were:
Henrik
Vogler 1st - Germany
Igor
Butseroga 2nd – Ukraine
Jonas
Ekman 3rd – Sweden
Blake
8th – RSA
The
final positions for the juniors at the end of the fly-offs were:
Jason
Weber 1st – RSA
Mykola
Horban 2nd – Ukraine
Max
Finke 3rd – Germany
Wouter
8th – RSA
Overall
we had a really successful world championship, and the Model Gliding
Association now collectively have 11 FAI medals to our credit. A special word
of thanks goes out to our helpers, Kristi Van Der Mast, Graham Kirkland and
Bruce Tompkins, for all their assistance, we would not have managed without
you.
