Thanks to the designers for sharing these Free plans,

This video to shows you what 4D flying is all about ! ENJOY !

The Arrow is now available as a plan and instruction manual

Arrow V3 is Back!!! from Donatas Pauzuolis on Vimeo.

Visit Donata’s site to get the plans.

This is no excuse when it comes to flying. Next time you exhibit strange maneuvres, the excuse that ‘it’s me sticks’ will not be tolerated!
(of course it totally depends on how you interpret the above message, but we’ll not go there)

Due to hall sizes and safety issues we are unable to fly the FAI schedule. Therefore we have adopted the schedule flown by other European countries.

B Schedule

A Schedule

or, have a look at the video’s on the van der Vecht’s site:

Niels Rijkhoff flying the B Schedule

Derk v d Vecht flying the A Schedule

F3P-AM

1.Donatas Pauzuolis
2.Vitalijus Pilkionis
3.Richard Boyd

F3P-A

1.Donatas Pauzuolis
2.Vitalijus Pilkionis
3.Richard Boyd

F3P-B
1.Ricardas Siumbrys
2.Ignas Matulevicius
3.Danyl Pilaev

Pylon race

1.Ricardas Siumbrys
2.Vitalijus Pilkionis
3.Ilja Voronov

First pics: here

Most up to date: is the RCGroups Forum

Jason Noll’s Seminoll.

And do I see a wiff of nostalgia: The anhedral in the stab reminds me of Hanno Pretner’s Curare.

(source: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=971117 )

Additional pictures on the Kestrels site.

After returning from Tucson in the middle of October my preparation for the Leeds competition started with a trip to Belgium for a European indoor event in November. Richard Boyd and I traveled over and learnt a lot from this event, placing 15th & 6th respectively, a great result for a first go with the “big boys”. I had a few models to build for Leeds so in 2 weeks I built three shocky’s, a new RC Factory Clik!, an Expressfly Swift XL and an Expressfly Sukhoi 31, so it was a busy month prior to the competition. In between building I got some practice, maybe not as much as I would have liked but with hiring and getting access to halls I was happy enough with how I was flying.

My new Clik for F3P-A was powered by a Stretcher 193.05LU motor, it ran a WEZ 8×4 carbon prop and was controlled by a YGE4 amp ESC. I used 4 JR185 servos and ran them through a Spektrum AR6300 RX slightly modified to save some weight (it starts at 2.2g, ended up at 1.2g, every little helps!) With an Evolite 350mah 2 cell pack it flies at 120g. The Clik is totally standard except for the Potato Masher Brakes, the brain child of our Indoor Genius Mr. Blokland and named by our good friend Sean Scullion. After some “trimming issues” I was happy to use the new Clik, I was lucky to have my older Clik as a backup and it is still very good. The Strecker motor is very very good, but it is expensive. I truly believe that my Eflite 250 motor in my other Clik is stronger and it’s no heavier either, but we try these things in our endeavors to have the best. Perhaps a combo of the Eflite 250 and YGE 4amp controller would make this the magic combination!! Watch this space!!

My AM models were the Expressfly Swift and the Sukhoi. Two very different models and I had two options depending on the venue. If the hall was big and high I would use the Swift as it is bigger, if the hall was small and low, then the fast and high energy Sukhoi would be my choice. The swift was powered by an Eflite 300 motor and an Eflite 10amp controller. As this model is nearly 900mm in span it’s very big, so thanks Kees for a few fancy electronic secrets we ran this model on 3cells, the Eflite 300 came alive with a few more volts and despite the extra weight at just over 180g it fly’s very light and slow. Again I used a Spektrum AR6300 lightened. The Sukhoi is a different animal, smaller, faster and more agile, it came out at about 140g with an Evolite 2cell and a Vytas motor, crazy performance and a very fun model.

My dad and I set sail for Leeds early on Saturday morning, fro a change I was the driver and we traveled down & across through a very wet England and arrived in Leeds about 2pm. After checking into the hotel we headed round to Model Shop Leeds for a look round, we meet Andy the competition organizer and the designer of the very popular Afriel indoor model. After a brief chat and parting with some cash for a few bits and bobs the competition hall was our next stop with the view to getting some final practice in. We were joined by Ollie & Shaun Staples, Richard McMaster, Martin Bell, Ian Watson, Claus Meijer and Carl Ollesson from Sweden and a few of Andy’s team who helped setup he hall. I flew about 6 batteries through my models and packed up whilst I still had them in one piece, well almost Ollie Staples and I had a play in the Sandpit at one end of the hall!! The hall was long and narrow with a few obstacles in the ceiling but it was fine and the same for everyone after all. Ian Watson was a busy boy, Ian picked up a model from me that Richard Boyd had supplied to him, it wasn’t finished and still had a lot of work to do, and well in about 40 mins Ian was flying it!! He spent a bit of time setting it up that night (before the glue had even dried) ready for the comp in the morning. The Scottish crew of Simon McNeill (well his is a Northern Ireland man living in Scotland), Chris Currie and Malcolm Balfour had planned to be at the practice but had a major mishap when Chris’ car broke down, to cut a long story short, they got lent a very small car and made it to Leeds about 5 hours late!!

Sunday morning dawned and when we arrived at the hall a good few people had already started flying. Andy and his team arrived soon after and set the hall up with speakers, scoring system, runway etc. I had a practice flight and everything was set for me anyway. I ended up helping Ian Watson put together his Sultimate, a few bits of cleverly placed Carbon stiffened it up and I left Ian to remount the motor.

Andy welcomed everyone and with a quick pilot’s brief, the competition was under way. The F3P-C class flew first, the standard was good and from a local Northern Ireland note, Gordon McCrea, Harry Reid and Richard McMaster flew well. After two rounds of competition Richard did really well and came out with first place and Harry a close 3rd & Gordon 5th. It was good to see Northern Ireland pilots can still cut it in the UK.

The B Schedule followed the C Class, local interest in this Class took the form of Robert Graham, I must admit to not seeing his flight (something to do with gluing a Mr. Watson’s plane back together, you might be seeing a re-occurring theme here!). Robert flying a Clik from Expressfly, with Eflite 250 and Spektrum gear did well in this tough class, taking 5th place. Ollie Witt flying a fancy foam Vrolet (a plane Jason Noll designed to win the ETOC Championship in 2006 I believe).

After a brief stop for Lunch, the F3P-A schedule took place. A look down the names on the list for this class showed it was going to be tough, Carl Ollesson (an ETOC competitor), Ian Watson, Malcolm Balfour, Mike Williams to name a few. We flew 2 rounds and then the top 5 flew a final round to decide the winner. The standard was good and with the exception of maybe Carl Ollesson it was hard to tell everyone apart, Carl was flying really well and his class showed. I was lucky enough to make the top 5 fly-off along with Carl, Ian, Malcolm & Steve Mallinder. The points must have been very tight as I though Chris Currie’s flying was worthy of the fly-off. From my perspective I flew my best round in the fly-off. The final results panned out as,
1) Carl Ollesson
2) Ian Watson
3) Matthew Poots
4) Malcolm Balfour
5) Steve Mallinder

A big well done everyone, Carl was silky smooth, Ian flew his Clik (his other model not the one he was working on) really well, Malcolm only starting flying indoor the week before and Steve as ever flew to his high Standard. I was really surprised to take 3rd place, I didn’t feel I flew as well as I could have but that’s competition for you!! It was also good to note that Horizon Hobby had 2 pilots in the top 5 fly-off.

The final round was the show piece, the Aeromusical. This is 2 mins to fly to your own music and try and meet the Criteria, so you need you routine to flow, match the beat and mood of the music, have technical merit and some new stuff that the judges won’t have saw before!! Sounds simple!! The standard off flying here was very high, so much talent in the UK for freestyle aerobatics and it showed. Ollie Witt came out on top with a themed routine, some Christmas music always impresses!! Carl Ollesson had two polished, well practiced and thought out routines and came a close second by only 1 point mind you. Malcolm Balfour showed why he is one of the UK’s top precision pilots and with some very technical rolling circles & 8’s flew his way into 3rd. I think I was 7th in AM, more practice required!! Ian Watson had been fixing all day at his AM plane and the motor mount had about had it, just before his round he got it fixed, just as he took off, into a snap, the motor fell off, it was a shame as he was in the running for 1st place!! He did himself justice though, glued the whole thing up again ready for round 2 and in Ian’s true style of low, aggressive 3D he flew a great AM, highly impressive as always, just a pity about the bad luck in Round 1.

Throughout the day Claus Meijer from Sweden was doing his thing and their no one better at entertaining a crowd, he has many tricks and his signature manoeuvre is hovering up and down his chest!! He is a really great guy to boot, very friendly and helpful. The competition was a massive success and brought F3P to the UK in style, well done to Andy for organising the event, getting great sponsors to make the day one to remember. Also a big well done to all the pilots, I think everyone had a good day, it was fairly relaxed and set everyone up for Christmas nicely.

The trip for me was two fold, it worked really well as John from Horizon came up to support Steve and I. I think John was very impressed with the event, it gave him a chance to see all the products he deals with being used in competition environment, Spektrum was probably the most popular product with about 75% of pilots using it (that is a rough guess), he also got a chance to see what I do with some of the Spektrum products, i.e. make them lighter as weight is a key part of F3P, I take an already lightweight 2 g receiver, get my good friend Kees to spend about 2 hours, de-soldering, re-soldering etc etc to make it about 1g (sad I know but it all helps!), servo cases, who needs them, John did note that he picked up lots of idea’s for his own Indoor session closer to home so that was good. I also spent an hour or so with Alex Whittaker from RCM&E & AMI magazines, doing a little piece on my models, so with a bit of luck we will make the magazine in the new year. He also delivered a new model for me in the form of his Sukhoi which I will be flying next year in the IMAC events, so my car was jam packed on the way home!

Overall Leeds was a good way to end a very very busy and enjoyable 2008. Big thanks to all my sponsors but in particular Horizon who have been a great help and highly supportive throughout the season, 2009 here we come!!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

Matthew

Air Figther Club

Jurgen Heilig has posted more pics on his blog. Always worth a looksee..

First 2 long video’s from Corne, (see Youtube for his other work, he just posted a nice airbrush video.)

Rest of the video’s from Patrick

Derk and Bert van der Vecht:

Martin Muller and Stephanie Schwan:

Martin Muller with his EVP(Electric Variable Pitch)plane:

Donatas Pauzuolis is flying his aeromusical

Donatas Pauzuolis and Gernot Bruckmann with there Synchronous Flying aeromusical

Wall-Halla Crash

Jeroen van Gog with the Final act of the Dutch Wall-Hala 2008 show

And some pics on the Dutch F3P forum:

Com’on, you can see the pics? What more do you want? If you really, really want to know what they say, ask your webmaster!

I’m sure you will find more googling wall-halla. Let me know if you see good ones!

Richard McMaster's Su 31

This is ExpressFly Richards design. If you pester him enough he might let you have one too…
The impressive paintwork is Richard McMaster’s own handywork, so you might want to ask him how he does it. (I know, it’s simple, all you need is a bit of patience)

F3P – C Results

1st Place Richard McMaster – Northern Ieland
2nd Place Connor Stephenson – Our Local lad from Leeds
3rd Place Harry Reid – Northern Ireland

F3P – B Results

1st Place : Ollie Witt
2nd Place : Martin Bell
3rd Place : Graham Roscoe

F3P-A Results

1st Place : Carl Ollson – Sweden
2nd Place : Ian Watson
3rd Place : Matthew Poots – Northern Ireland

Matthew's Clik! with Potato mashers.

Aeromuscial Results
1st Place: Ollie Witt
2nd Place: Carl Ollson – Sweden
3rd Place: Malcom Balfour – Scotland

3DRC has more, keep an eye on it as I’m sure more pics and video’s will appear. (Competition Flying > F3P UK Indoor Flying Champs > YouTube Vids.)