F3B Sonnenwendpokal Nardt 2024

Detailed competition results: https://mg-airsports.eu/competition/312

Another weekend and another competition completed. Nardt 2024 perfectly fit into this year’s line of competitions with difficult conditions, especially for duration flights.

The weather didn’t look good on Saturday morning. A lot of clouds and the radar already showed rain coming toward us. With the strong western winds, it did not take long until it began. Even before we were able to do the briefing. Half an hour later it looked better and we began with duration. After the rain and without sun there was little hope for any rising air masses. Especially with the strong and turbulent wind. The Ground was in the wind shadow of the tree line but once the model was above, the winches had to work a lot and the resulting launch altitudes at least were good.
That was also necessary, because you were almost unable to fly forward without ballast.
Combined this resulted in a lot of short duration flights with only one Rasmus Krogh Petersen reaching 9:56min.
Another rain break later, we continued with duration round 2. Similar conditions, but the flight times diverged a bit more. Holgard Tunker got the 1000 points with 7:13min flight time.
The pilot often has to decide how far to follow the thermals with the wind and still be able to return to the landing point.

We now switched to the first speed. High altitudes and high model mass resulted in good speed times, but the first leg with the wind made the B-base turn so much more important. In the end most pilots were between 15s and 19s. Best by Petr Fusek with 13,87s.

The weather was improving a lot after lunch and we got more and more sun. This made the distance task much harder. Getting thew 1000 was between 15 and 31 legs. How do you select your ballast for this gamble? Round 2 distance was a bit more normal, at least with respect to the results.

To make it complete we made a third duration flight to close the day. The thermal activity was still there, but the strong wind made it almost impossible to really find the sweet spot. Making small mistakes was quickly punished. And you usually did not get a chance to stay flying in low altitudes.
The resulting classement is definitely an interesting read. Andreas Herrig made an incredible flight by finding a thermal at maximum visible distance with the wind. However, he managed to get the aircraft back and made a perfect landing as well. The other pilots in this group were probably not too happy about that, several with under 5minutes flight time.

Sunday brought a lot of sun and a bit lower wind throughout the entire day.
We had to cover a lot: Three speeds and one distance.
Speed started with 15.5s to 18s. Best by Jürgen Pölzl with 14.99s, quite a bit ahead of the others.

Distance round three showed the already strong thermals, today with a bit less wind and more predictability. Still, they were gone quickly. Circling before starting the flight became kind of a must, although often it did not really increase the model’s altitude. In the last group Frank Thomas and Jens Buchert gave a great show, racing each other in a thermal. For the win. Jens came out with two legs ahead, 31 total.

One more speed before lunch break with again a bit faster flights. Several below 15s. The conditions were almost perfect, some thermals, a bit more cross wind components and a bit less wind than Saturday. Petr Fusek got his second speed 1000 with 14,40s.

After lunch the final speed was flow in opposite order of the current ranking. No big changes to the previous speed, but especially for the leading group we saw some too early turns and several flights with unusual mistakes like late turns or not flying straight. Markus Becker was able to keep his first place with a 14,23s, while Thomas Gruber won this speed with an amazing 13,46s flight.

In the end, Markus Becker wins the Sonnenwendpokal 2024, his first World Cup and Eurotour win, congratulations! Jürgen Pölzl and Steffen Besemer followed on the podium.
The Speed ranking based on the averaged four speeds was won by Andreas Herrig with 14,75s.

It was nice to see several of our younger pilots again this weekend. This clearly shows that our sport is continuing in the next generation and that the thrill and intensity of the winch launch cannot be compensated by motorized aircraft and drones.

Reinhard Dylla once more organized a great competition and the helpers at the A and B-Base did an incredible job. Both lunch and dinner were perfectly organized and tasted very good.
I want to end with a big thank you and see you again next year for maybe another round of the historically extreme Nardt weather conditions!

This report was already published on: fooblog