2010 F3J World Championships - Qualifier #1

The 1st 2010 F3J National Team Qualifier event was hosted succesfully at BERG on 22 August 2009. To allow for poor weather, Sunday 23 August 2009 was also scheduled, but as we were able to fit in 6 full rounds this was deemed unnessessary.

The field was swung around by more than 90 degrees during the day to account for a change in wind direction (which the weather force suggested might be northerly all day - obviously it never was). Click on the results table to expand to full size:

For the record, Chris was flying his Pike Perfect, Craig maidened his Explorer, Michele flew a Pike Perfect SL & Explorer.

Derek Marusich was our fantastic CD for the day, & he most kindly donated the R100 petrol money back to the MGA to support the team. Martie provided catering (did we mention that F3J is rather physical & requires lots of energy?).

The only issue occured when a full size aircraft (a "Jabiru"?) tried to fly amongst the models in the air over the field. He had to take hard evasive action (90 degrees left turn) & the closest model performed a split-S (on landing) to avoid a almost certain crash. It was just as well that thios pilot took action, as I believe he would have smashed into the radio tower if he had contunued along his route. Unbelievably, this all took place at less than 80 metres altitude - a CAA "near miss" incident will be reported.

Fly Safely