John O’Donnell, page 40 Better Propellers 3 has provided this extra information:
My recommendation of pre-tensioning long rubber motors by making up the motor as two parallel portions still works when the portions have unequal numbers of strands e.g. a 14 strand motor would be tensioned using 6 and 8 strand portions – and putting the SAME number of pre-tensioning turns on each. I have been doing this for over half a century, so I know it works.
‘Tim Gray’ hooks are my preferred choice of a fitting at the propeller end of a motor – but it is essential to have them bent in the correct direction. This is as shown in the drawing published in BP 3. If bent opposite hand – mirror image fashion – it will soon demonstrate its faults. Be careful when making (or buying) your hooks.
The photos show RED plastic sleaving on these hooks. The colour is functional as it assists finding the hook when dropped on the ground !
Free Flight World Championships report correction:
Photo 6 at the bottom right of p. 25 is mis-captioned John Cooper, instead of John Williams.
Product Review, Eze Dope
If you would like to see a step by step video tutorial on using Eze Dope, then follow this link to Deluxe Materials You Tube content at
Extended Report on EuroFly 2013, 26/27 October 2013 by Mike Evatt.
What better setting could there be for this event than an idyllic alpine valley between Bern and Thun overlooked by the snow-capped Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau.
Potentially this could have been the largest World Cup Event ever with 217 competitors from 24 countries with advance entries of 252.
Day One – F1B Rubber, F1C Power and F1H Glider
It was an exceptional flying day. Calm and warm with temperatures into the 80s Fahrenheit by mid-afternoon. Although as usual for this venue the air was fickle at times. True the site is not without some drawbacks being crossed by a stream, a road and a busy railway line and dotted with some quite substantial trees. An innovation this year was the use of a ‘cherry picker’ to safely retrieve models from their higher branches.
F1B was not without its drama. Alex Andruikov was already the leader in the World Cup, and Andrei Burdov needed to win to overtake him. In the first fly-off to seven minutes maximum involving 36 flyers, Alex wound two models. On the flight line he applied hand turns and broke both motors. With only three minutes to spare he dug out a broken motor, wound a fresh one and launched in the final seconds. The climb looked good, the glide looked perfect but the air was not good enough to give the required seven minutes flight time to compete in the second fly-off. Meanwhile Andrei Burdov had progressed to the 2nd and final fly-off, this time to a nine minute maximum. Andrei needed to win but could only manage fifth and so Alex was crowned World Champion for the seventh time!
Alex Andriukov had flown what appeared to be a conventional high aspect ratio four panel wing aeroplane whereas Burdov flew a flapped wing machine for at least some of the time. Flapped F1Bs seemed to be popular with the Latvians, Russians and the Dutch, with a fair smattering of LDA airfoils being used as well.
Meanwhile in F1C the 23 strong field appeared to be divided roughly 1:3 in the use of folders a la Babenko and conventional six panel designs a la Vebitskey. Artem Babenko was the man to beat in the World Cup but could only manage 5th in the first fly-off. Wachtler, Aleksandrov and Truppe went for nine minutes and finished in that order. Viacheslav Aleksandrov had to win to deny Artem his WC victory.
The final round of the Euro Challenge for F1H was also taking place on this first day. The first two places were assured for Thomas Weimer and Brit Gary Madelin but third place was still in doubt. Thomas won this round and event organiser Ansgar Nüttgens was second ensuring a third place overall.
What a difference a day makes!
Day Two – F1A Glider, F1Q Electric Power and F1G Rubber
The Sunday morning dawned grey and wet. The warm temperatures and blue skies of Saturday had given over to a very soggy flying field shrouded in mist and low cloud. It was not yet windy – that would come later! Parking on the saturated ground was difficult with many vehicles needing to be pulled free by tractors before the end of the day.
Few seemed keen to take to the field as the competition opened and so it was somewhat surprising that there were 34 maximum scores by the end of the first round. Conditions were awful but there were some very impressive launches. From a distance it was easy to see that some competitors were able to achieve a launch height of at least twice towline length. Most models were easily seen as they were using high brightness flashing LEDs. The sky on occasions was full of red and white flashing pinpricks of light.
The wind speed increased and the organisers decided to call it a day after the end of round four. So the result was declared a draw and eleven competitors were declared equal first. This made no difference to the F1A World Cup as no one could overtake Mikail Koshonzkhin who achieved his third win in succession.
In F1Q Electric Power, more was at stake and all nine entrants posted scores. As the final result in this competition could affect the ultimate World Cup result the organisers decided that in this case there should be a fly-off. Ron Assmuss needed to win to take the World Cup lead from Heikki Salminen and both had maxed out! Ron climbed the highest but a long downwind leg took him away from helpful air. Heikki contacted better air from a more modest climb and took both titles with a flight of 270 seconds over Ron’s 144 seconds.
The F1G Rubber event, which forms part of the F1G Euro Challenge, suffered most in the appalling conditions with only four flyers posting times. Evgeny Gorban gave a master-class in the flying of these small models in adverse conditions winning the competition with four maxes.
Andrei Burdov’s Flapped section F1B
Viacheslav Aleksandrov placed second in both Eurofly and the World Cup with his F1C folder
