Why are the Austrians team so good at F3f in Denmark

[f3fisa]

Afaik they do not have any coastal cliff sites.

David.

[oipigface]

They practice a lot on all sorts of slopes.

[Phil.Taylor]

a few years ago there was a video of them practicing on a very low "slope" - earthworks / edge of an open quarry? - their EM was looking pretty good

[Andy_B]

The Austrians and the Germans fly slope in Denmark …..they don’t fly that much slope in their home countries …..and they have a very good team ethic …..as they do in most things they do 

[Andy_B]

Also there good at F3F in every country they fly in

[czyno]

Why?

 

[Peter G]

Now that the dust has settled on my experience in Denmark...

There are number of reasons the Austrian team were so good on the Danish slopes, although it has to be said that Philipp and Thorsten (Ger) were clearly a cut above even their team mates.

They fly their models heavy and rely on really good pumps to generate the initial speed and height. The most challenging days were 4 & 5 on Kallerup (google map imapge below) in strong winds of 16-20ms. To be honest the slope wasn't too difficult to fly in these conditions and the landings on all the slopes were fine (surprisingly!). However, getting close to these guys was a real challenge.

This slope is nowhere near straight and the centre is on a promintary. If you pumped in front of the promintary, there was little lift, so pumps needed to be acurate, either side of the centre. The top guys will have been flying at 4.5kg in this wind speed, which takes some time to get going.

The particular evolution of the EM style that worked best here was very much an elevator led turn, with a chosen angle of bank and then a fairly open half loop back on the same trajectory and letting the model come right back at you and getting into the compression near the edge again before setting up for the next turn. It was notable that the lines the top 5 were using were more vertical than those seen in the past, although a more outward EM could also be effective.  What was really interesting about the top guys was that the first 3 or 4 legs are 'written off' to a certain extent, building speed gradually by flying an open line on a good trajectory - absolutely NOT pulling hard when you hear the buzz - but letting the model run and gain speed as it goes.

As well as the jeopardy of letting the model come back at yourself, which i am used to and trained for, the really difficult thing is to anticipate the bases without pulling hard, which kills the speed. My 'lines' were consistently not vertical enough and I found it really difficult not to pull when you hear the buzz. You need to have faith that by letting the model run in the first few legs, the speed gained will offset any distance saved by pulling. So this is what I need to practice and get used to, finding a length with a more open style and flap/snap settings that allow me to carry more weight effectively.

There was some variability on every day and every slope, particularly in the first round of each day, when the wind was inevitably building and the air 'drying out', however, there was maybe 10% in terms of time so not as bad as the inland slopes we fly. Phillip's run below in good air is not exactly typical of how they flew as he is pulling harder than he would be if it wasn't good air.

You can see from the scores how hard it was with only one pilot (Thorsten) getting a 900+ score against the time above and many in the top 20 being in the mid 700's.

 

[oipigface]

Excellent analysis, Peter. (Not sure that I understand it all, though!)

[f3fman]

Good luck Peter with the "not pulling too hard" ............ I struggled with that for many years   !

 

[William]

Thanks for this insight Pete, very interesting and quite astonishing to see how good the top few pilots are!