Jury Report on Free Flight European Championships 2014 F1A F1B F1C
FAI Jury
| Srjan Pelagic | SRB | President |
| Wilhelm Kamp | AUT | Member |
| Cringu Alexandru Popa | ROU | Member |
Dates
August 11th to 17th 2014
Location
Salonta, Romania
Information
There were three pre-contest Information Bulletins and a professionally prepared WEB site http://www.frmd.ro, which contained all necessary information. The fourth bulletin was distributed just before the event and the final bulletin with the results was distributed on the final day prior to the closing banquet.
Participation
The Championships were attended by 212 senior competitors from 29 countries (AUT, BIH, BUL, CRO, CZE, DEN, ESP, EST, FIN, FRA, GBR, GER, HUN, ITA, ISR, LAT, LTU, NED, NOR, POL,ROU, RUS, SLO, SRB, SVK, SUI, SWE, TUR, UKR) and about 140 other persons (TM, helpers, time –keepers, helpers etc) – total: approx. 400 persons. Participation per classes was:
| class | Teams | Individuals |
| F1A | 29 | 83 |
| F1B | 27 | 77 |
| F1C | 22 | 52 |
| Total | 78 | 212 |
Accommodation
Championships HQ was located at Hotel Slavia in Salonta, where some of the teams were accommodated. Rest of the teams were in other hotels in Salonta and some of the teams booked their rooms in hotels in Oradea about 40 km from Salonta because of small capacity of hotels in Salonta. Breakfasts were served depending on the schedule at the hotel or distributed in the field. Cooked meals were distributed in the field and dinner was at hotels. Participating teams relied mainly on their own cars or vans. Time-keepers were transported by a bus.
Flying site
Championships were organized by a very experienced organizer at the flying field, which was several times used for similar events. The organizer did his best to conduct this event at FAI standards, but some circumstances like full availability of the flying field objectively changed and that caused reactions of participants. CIAM should take care of present conditions for organisation of the Cat 1 events and modify some rules and technical specifications in near future to comply with present situation.
Flying field was in an open, flat area several kilometres from Salonta, half way to the Hungarian border. It was used earlier for aeromodelling events of similar kind, but recently there were made some changesby the owner of the field that have decreased its full availability for aeromodelling events. Almost a half of the field was covered with metal fences about 1,5 m high because of buffaloes breeding. Also there were ditches and tranches on the field, which made retrieval of the models difficult. The greatest obstacle was a canal, which was bridged with three bridges, but distance between them required competitors to walk or run much more than in other events. Only ten days before these Championships the Junior FF World Championships was held at the same field and similar remarks were made by the participants and the FAI Jury, but the organizer was not able much to do to improve this situation.
The organizer has arranged very correctly the central spot with a canteen and all necessary facilities, but it was used very little because of frequent relocation of flight line to positions distant more than 1 km. So lunch bags were distributed from a van and there was no shaded place for all to have their lunch. Every participant received a 2 liters bottle of drink water every day. A common remark of participants was that four toilets were not enough for so many participants and also a tank with water for refreshment was missing. Medical care was available but had to be made more visible to participants.
Weather
Weather was sunny and very hot with temperatures of 30 to 37 C in the afternoon. Wind speed changed from 0 to 5 m/s and it was increasing during the day so usually the highest wind speed was in the seventh round.
Competition
Weather conditions were good for flying, but difficult for competitors and all participants because of the high temperature and a very dry air. Competition flights were between 7:00 and 14:00 with a break (including a lunch break) till 19:00 when fly-offs used to start. It was also necessary in some cases to continue or move fly-offs early in the morning at 6:30. Therefore all participants were subjected to large physical efforts being occupied with this activity from 5:00 (when they use to get up) to 23:00 (when they went to sleep).
Timekeeping was correct. About 60 timekeepers were mainly domestic or from the neighboring Hungarian club, but it was not enough for huge fly-offs, so it was necessary to ask free participants to act as time-keepers. Participation per classes was:
| Class | Individuals | First flyoff | Second flyoff | Third flyoff | Teams |
| F1A | 83 | 39 | 19 | – | 29 |
| F1B | 77 | 38 | – | – | 27 |
| F1C | 52 | 31 | 15 | 7 | 21 |
These figures show that after seven regular competition flights almost 50% of participants should continue with another competition – fly-off that extends to two or three more flights. Although the rules allow free competitors to serve as time-keepers in fly-off it was not possible to collect enough people for this task late in the afternoon, so there were only two time-keepers in the first fly-off. For example there were 39 competitors in F1A fly-off and that required 117 TK with stop-watches and binoculars and 39 tripods. In regular competition for 29 teams if was enough only 58 binoculars and 29 tripods! This problem deserves to be studied by CIAM very carefully and the rules should be changed so to make fly-off an exception for resolving ties as it used to be earlier.
Model Processing
Model processing was in the Sports Hall in Salonta. It was a precise schedule for every team and tables with experienced processing teams. However it was not possible to stick to the schedule for different reasons (late coming of teams, problems with electronic scales at the beginning etc) but finally processing was completed correctly.
Opening and Closing Ceremony
Opening and closing ceremonies were in the Sports Hall in Salonta. They were friendly, pleasant and short followed with attactive dances of domestic groups. The Closing Banquet was in Motel Millenium close to Salonta. Winners were awarded with the FAI medals and diplomas and with cups of the organizers. Also seven FAI perpetual trophies were awarded:
Class F1A – Individual – Oleg Memorial Challenge Trophy to Robert Lesko (CRO);
Class F1A – Team – Ukraine Challenge Trophy to Russian team;
Class F1B – Individual – Sergey Gorbik Memorial Challenge Trophy to Jan Cihak (CZE);
Class F1B – Team – Ukraine Challenge Trophy to Russian team;
Class F1C – Individual – Kup Vazduhoplovnog Saveza Trophy to Viacheslav Aleksandrov (UKR) and
Class F1C – Team – Ukraine Callenge Trophy to Russian team.
General Classification in F1ABC – Jack North Memorial Trophy – Russian team.
Remarks
General remarks for F1ABC Championships are: a) Flying fields are becoming smaller and smaller. Possible flying fields must be verified by CIAM prior a bid is submitted to CIAM. b) Rules for fly-offs must be changed so to reduce number of participants in fly-off to less than 10 per a class. c) CIAM should put requests for minimum standards for organization of Cat 1 events in an Annex to the rules and make it known to both organizers and participants. d) Such events are physically exhausting, so their organisation should be adjusted to the physical and health conditions of the participants.
Conclusions
2014 FAI European Championships for FF Model Aircraft in Classes F1ABC was successfully organized and conducted. All remarks given in this report are mainly of wider interest and should be carefully elaborated by CIAM bodies, so to allow easier and more comfortable organization and participation in Cat 1 events in future.