A mid contest report from the UK Space Modelling team, still out at the 2025 World space modelling championships in Zrenjanin, Serbia.
The duration and altitude contest are now concluded, with some strong results from the UK team.
In our streamer duration event, we had the strongest ever results from a British team, achieving 4th overall and tantalisingly close to a much coveted team medal.
In parachute duration, the baking serbian sunshine was driving some monster thermals, making model recovery a real challenge. With a 10 gram model suspended under an 800mm parachute, models were catching lift and disappearing down range. In FAI spacemodeling contests, 2 models permitted for three flights, so one model has to fly trice. This means the pressure was on the recovery team, as well as the competitors. After a fly away Max in the first round, Sharon Robinson Calver opted for a BMK GPS tracker for her second flight, theoretically guaranteeing recovery. The deep recovery team chased the model across the serbian countryside for over 2 hours, with the transporter reporting a peak altitude of 1600m (launch height was 400m). 1.5h in to the chase, the model was spotted at under 100m altitude, giving hope for a safe recovery. The recovery team was heartbroken to watch the model get pulled in to the next thermal, and once again ascend to the heavens. We can only assume it’s still up there, because at this point the flight exceeded the duration of the GPS tracker battery.
The altitude and boost glider contests yielded results that are a good foundation to build on, showing that the team has models that work, but need additional development to extract the kind of performance required to compete with the best in the world.
Today is another big day for the team, with S7 scale to fly (those beautiful models discussed earlier), as well as S8 R.C. rocket glider. Fingers crossed for light winds because both those classes of model are very sensitive to bad launch conditions
We will report in with a further update soon!
Trevor Seabrook.
