Day 1
Half of our team arrived here in Denmark Thursday afternoon (Dave + Summer Fisher & TM Julie Fisher), driving with all of the team’s helicopters (8 in total) plus generators, lipos and charging gear. Stu Smith and Duncan arrived late last night (Friday) having flown into Billund airport (1.5 hours drive from our accommodation).
We had an early start this morning heading out to one of the practice sites which we were fortunate to have to ourselves. The winds are proving challenging as they reach & sometimes exceed 20mph. Our official practise flights at the comp site were scheduled for 2pm so as it was a 30 min drive from the practice site, we headed off in plenty of time. Flights completed we registered and went through model scrutineering. No issues at all and we had time to head back to our accommodation to change ready for the opening ceremony which started at 5pm.
Here we met up with our F3C GBR team-mates. Having experienced long drawn-out opening ceremonies in the past, it was a relief to have everything done & dusted within 20 minutes. Our Danish hosts then invited everyone to partake of cake (lots of cake!) & dessert wine which was very enjoyable.
The Team Managers’ meeting followed and the flight order for the four preliminary rounds was decided. As we are sharing the flightline with F3C, tomorrow is a later start for us (the round starts at 3.50pm). Live scores for the Championships can be found here f3scoring - 2024 F3CN European Championship if anyone is interested. We will have tough competition from the home team so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out over the next few days.
Julie Fisher
F3N TM
Day 2
What a day! We have just returned to our accommodation (it’s 9pm) after a long but rewarding day. Our team was practising at the practise site (30 mins from where we are staying) from 9am – 3pm. Today was the first official round, Set Manoeuvres (1) which started at 3.50pm. Although still windy, it certainly wasn’t as bad as it was yesterday.
Summer was first up of team GBR. She is actually the first ever female pilot to compete in F3N and I think she surprised a lot of the other pilots as to her capabilities. She finished this round 9th out of 14. Both Dave & Stu had difficulty with the Vertical Tic Toc Eight meaning this manoeuvre was scored very low – definitely room for improvement in the next Sets round but they still achieved a very respectable 7th & 8th place respectively. Duncan was our last pilot to fly and he surprised himself and a few others by winning the round. Go Duncan!!
The Danes laid on a ‘Hot Dog’ night treating everyone to locally made hot dogs and the remains of the cakes from yesterday’s opening ceremony. Very tasty and saved us having to cook.
Tomorrow is the Freestyle round. Summer is up first at 08.20 but we’ll be at the official site from 7am as the first 7 pilots are allowed to have a practise flight before the round commences. So it’s off to bed now as we’ll all be up at stupid o’clock.
Julie Fisher, F3N Team Manager
Day 3
Today’s round was Freestyle and Summer was up first at 8.20am. The video attached shows us at the competition site at 7am this morning. Thankfully the winds had dropped off to virtually nothing which was a welcome relief from the last few days of winds around 20mph. By 10am the round had finished: Duncan finished in 2nd place scoring 488, just two points behind the leader, Italian Luca Pescante. Stu flew a great round finishing in 4th with Dave & Summer finishing in 6th & 7th place respectively. All in all a great round for team GBR.
After a relaxing lunch back at our accommodation, we’re about to head out to the practice site to spend the afternoon working on Sets & Music. This evening the organisers have arranged a small social event at the beach in Sonderborg and we’re meeting up with the GBR F3C team this evening for dinner.
Julie Fisher
F3N TM