July F5B/D Day SEFSD

By Steve Neu,

Steve Manganelli in front of the planes getting ready to fly

July F5B 2013

This last Sunday afternoon SEFSD hosted the July edition of F5B/D Day at the Bay. Bruce Brown put in several flight with his Avionik D05 F5D plane. If you have not seen a F5D racer before it is truly impressive to see a 2 lb model run at speeds of upwards of 200mph–then glide in for a smooth landing at 25mph! Not too many planes have such a wide speed range!

The usual suspects from the local area were out along with Lenny Keer from Colorado. Lenny is what you might say is dedicated to these planes since he makes the monthly road trip with his wife every month to San Diego. We also had a visit from a legend of modeling Larry Jolly—looking things over. Sounds like he will be back in the near future to play with some fast planes!

As for flying with the F5B gliders the weather which was fairly cool for the middle of July with calm winds made for near perfect conditions for turning in very good lap counts in distance. The scores for the most part were in the 48-51 bases—with yours truly getting the 51 base score. Of course there were the usual comedy routines—the best was provided by Jeff Keesaman when he managed to miss a third of the turns at the far pylon on his first flight.

We had Don Corum, of the local top heli pilots took up my offer and flew my high powered F5B “rental” –he also looked over the F5D planes and it looks like may have another local joining us soon.

As usual Steve and Michelle Manganelli looked up into the sky and pressed buttons for the afternoon–many thanks for their efforts! Most here might not know it but Steve and Michelle will be running a F5B World Cup contest in Hawaii in September. We will have a three day contest with pilots from Australia, Japan USA, Russia, Switzerland and Italy in attendance. The idea was first proposed by one of our Japanese friends at the last World Champs in Romania. After a series of F5B events in Eastern Europe a venue like Hawaii seems like paradise! We worked with the FAI and AMA and the local club in Hawaii to make this possible!

Published October 23, 2015

US F5D Team Trials Contest

Team

By Tim Lampe
Champaign, Illinois

Friday and Saturday September 18 & 19 the US F5D Team Trials was held at the CCRCC (Champaign County Radio Control Club) in Champaign, Illinois. F5D is the electric pylon racing class under the FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) organization – the governing body of international model aviation competition. Every other year a team trials competition is held to determine the three competitors to represent the United States at the world championships, which, in 2016 will be in Lugo, Italy.

Although pylon racing is very much alive and well in the US, this particular niche – F5D – has a small following. Perhaps there is already enough variety in the AMA classes and American pylon racers haven’t yet embraced the technology of high-performance electrics.

As SESFD members already know, the trials is typically held at their field in San Diego, CA. But when I learned the trials was not to be held there this year I decided to make a proposal to my own club here in down-state Illinois. Fortunately, the club membership is very outgoing and supportive, so my proposal was accepted!

Pylon 1

I conducted a couple of training sessions ahead of time including actual flights around the course to get the pylon judges, timer and starter up-to-speed so there would be no delays the days of the competition.

Typically, an F5D race features three models racing simultaneously, but since we had only four competitors it was easier and more practical just to fly one at a time. This way fewer course workers are also needed (a starter, a timer and three pylon judges). I recruited fellow competitor/C.D. (contest director) Jay Cappis from nearby Bloomington to be the official C.D. of record.