The Maycompetiton WC event

At the Maycompetition of the last two years, I have mentioned that we have been very lucky with the weather and I guess the same could be stated about this years event. Even if the winds were rather tough, the field was (just about) large enough to house the flights and even the late flyoffs could be performed without any trouble. Both the friday and sunday were not flyable because of rain and hard winds.

Since the Maycompetition of this year celebrated its 40-years aniversary, we celebrated the event by authorizing it as a World Cup ff-contest. And to our great pleasure, we could welcome particpators from Great Britain, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany which of course contributed to the high class of the individual performances. All toghether, over 70 free flight pilots gathered together to compete for the titles and WC-points.

As ususal, Mats Rosling was the contest director and he had to handle some pretty tough decisions during the day, mostly beacuse of the windy conditions. This he managed very well with the help of the jury and some voting among the contest participators when needed. For the first time, UFK/ms used computers to present the result of the contest and immediately after the flyoffs, the printed result was ready to bring along home. UFK had also managed to get hold of some bicycles which were well used for quick model retreival. Since F16 has many hard paved routs on the field, model retrieval with bicycles is very easy and comfortable. Riding your bike on a wide runway, along with the wind, right under your nicely circling model is a very pleasant experience.

The flying itself does not need much comments except for that the maximum time was limited to 2:30 in the 1:st, 2:nd and 5:th rounds due to the hard winds in order to allow the models to touch down within the field boundaries. This probably contributed to the large flyoffs in F1A and F1B. Since the sun was shining there was some thermal activity even if we did not see any really high flights which was rather good, thinking about the limited size of the field (about 2 km). The fly off was moved forward twice to allow the wind to calm down and the thermals to disappear and the F1A flyoff was started at 20:00. The only competitor that managed to fly the full 5 minutes was Mikael Holmbom from Matfors, Sweden, who of course won the F1A contest. 20 minutes later, Michael Woodhouse from Great Britain flew outstanding 7 minutes with his wake with almost no thermals to help him. A very impressing performance from Mr Woodhouse. F1C did not need a flyoff since John Cuthbert from GB was the only one to fly 5 max which is not easy in this complicated class. Gunnar Ågren from Uppsala who is very much "the man" behind this event piloted himself to very nice second place in the same class. Well done gentlemen ! Coupe' d Hiver (F1G) was also flown and here did Anders Sjöberg from Solna MSK, Sweden win. The Coupes had some trouble in the wind since their limited power could not bring them over the lower turbulent layers into the higher non-disturbed air and no F1G-pilot managed to fly 5 max. Well done anyway, Anders.

UFK/ms would like to thank all our time keepers that helped us. You make the Uppsala contests quite unique since the competitors does not need to time each other but can focus on the flying. All the other people from UFK that helped us with everything that must be done in an event of this magnitude such as score filing, refreshments offers, moving around all the gear etc shall of course also be mentioned. Thank you, everybody !

We also want to thank the management of F16 airbase that allows us to use their very good field for our free flight competitions.

Larger pictures (50-100 kB) can be downloaded by clicking the thumb nail images.
Please feel free to use these pictures as you like but be sure to mention the photographers name (Johan Åkerman) where ever they are displayed or published

Sausages and drinks for sale !	The UFK score board managed by Per-Arne Svensson	David Thorsén briefs the time keepers	The flight line
The UFK F1B team, Magnus, David and Johan	Deniz Varhos with girlfriend Åsa taking a rest	David Thorsen flew Wake as well	Rolf Astervik and his Coupe
Johan Akerman from Uppsala made it to the flyoff in F1B	F1C fellows	Håkan Broberg and his Wake	Finnish F1A flyer Tommi Isotalo
Jari Valo from Finland flew F1A and Combat	Magnus Söderling holds Deniz F1A	Finnish Wake flyer Markku Kiiskinen waits for good weather	Kiiskinen launching
Brian Russel Peers looks happy	Robert Hellgren prepares F1A	The fighting face of Micke Holmbom	Pelle Findahl and his F1A.s
Sofia is about to Release Micke H:s F1A	Mike Woodhouse winds his rubber	Preparing for another max	Mr Woodhouse launches his "blackwing"
Gunnar Ågren and Johan Cuthbert were on top of F1C	The F1A flyoff	Micke Holmbom receives the F1A 1:st price	F1B first price to Michael Woodhouse

The official result of the contest

F1A F1B F1C F1G

Or download the result list as PDF-file (2,1 MB)