F5B racing is a small niche in the USA, with the entire national team being members of SEFSD. The current team consist of Steve Neu, Jeff Keesaman, Lenny Keer, & Artie Means; with Steve Manganelli handling the most important job of ‘Esteemed Contest Director’.
For those that haven’t seen the F5B planes, they are an electric ‘multi-task glider’. Roughly 7,000 watts of power goes through the motors (which Steve Neu makes), allowing the planes to accelerate vertically from 0 to almost 200 mph in under 2 seconds. Very scary, very fast, very fun! The contest has a 200 second speed task through a 150m course, 10 minute thermal duration task, and then precision landing.
Traditionally the World Championships are held every two years, but between Covid and the war in Ukraine, we missed 2020 & 2022. For the 2024 World Championships (Arizona), it was an eye-opener on how much the European teams had improved during our gap of international competition. We have some work to do to catch up!
With the next World Championships slated for August 2026 in Australia, Team USA has been training and trying to bridge the gap with our European competition. Besides our (nearly) monthly practices in San Diego, we have also been hitting the road to train in different conditions.
The Eurotour is a three-event series that moves through Europe, where the best F5B pilots compete. In September, Lenny & Artie packed up the planes and headed to Zurich, Switzerland for the last event of the year. The Europeans did an incredible job running the event and giving us both a solid lesson in how to race F5B at the highest level. Our scores were humbling, but the lessons were completely invaluable. https://www.contest-eurotour.com/category-f5b/
In October the entire team jumped on a plane to Denver to go train at Lenny’s home field in Colorado. Again, great to change venues and see the difference in our planes handling at 5,000 feet vs our home field at sea level.
So 10 months to go – and a lot to still be learned & if anyone wants to join the fun, let me know. I’m happy to put an F5B plane together for a demo flight.
-Artie Means
