2024 League

[Neil Harrison]

Below is Rev.1 of the F3K 2024 Calendar.

The top 3 pilots will be chosen to represent Team GBR at the 2025 World Championship.

 

 

 

 

Results R1.pdf

[Neil Harrison]

Please see new 2024 competition calendar above.

For the last few seasons, we have been making full use of the National Flying Centre at Buckminster, and making the competitions we have there two day events.  The 2024 season will be busy with other disciplines also making use of the centre, which is a great thing, as the centre is there for exactly this purpose. Manny Williamson has always supported us the best he can, but this means one of the competition dates this season will only be a 1 day event.  However camping will be available as always, so arriving a day early and staying a day extra is no problem.

Due to this, and the the popularity of the 2 day events, we wanted to maintain that we run five 2 day competitions.  As such, we have engaged with Malvern Soaring Association and they have agreed that we can run a 2 day event at Fish Meadow.  Full details for this, including camping will be released soon.

As you are all aware, we have made requests for some local rule changes, we have worked with the SFTC to finalise the small details.  Nick Jackson has done an amazing job and we should see F3K along with other Silent Flight disciplines have outdated rules changed.

This season we will be enforcing the rules with regards to competition entry.  All pilots must register/enter the competition no later than the Thursday preceding the event.  The call for 'Go'/'No Go' will be the same as always, and be announced no later than 6pm the day preceding the event.

Paul and myself have lots to organise with regard to preparing the matrix and setting the tasks etc and want to ensure that we are no longer trying to do this the night before the competition, we also have our own stuff to get ready, jobs and family to sort out.

As with most things in this crazy World, costs for everything have been increasing, we have managed to keep competition entry fees low for the last few seasons, however this is no longer sustainable and there will be a small increase.  Competition entry will now be £15 per day.

We will only be running one 'Come Try' event this year.  It seems that we have the most success from these events running them early on in the season.  This year we are running the 'Come Try' event over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, on Good Friday.  This will be followed by a 2 day competition.  I will be arriving on the Thursday to get everything ready, it would be great if as many of you 'experts' could spare time to help with this event?

Looking forward to seeing you all on Saturday 16th March at Twywell.

Very best regards, Neil

[MikeDLG]

17 hours ago, Neil Harrison said:

 

• There has been an increase to the number of events which count to your overall score, if 6 rounds are completed, the best 5 to count.

Hi Neil,

Just to clarify the above.  Is the league score the best 5 scores for the year?  Not the best 6 if we fly 7, best 7 if we fly 8 etc?

[PaulR]

Exact wording is as below, so a maximum of 5 to count (was a max of 4 last year).

7.5.2.6 Final BMFA F3K League annual results

(a) Final F3K BMFA annual league scores shall be determined by adding the scores achieved in the completed league contests qualifying for the final league results as shown below:

• Six or more contests - Best five results from such contests
• Five league contests - Best four results from such contests
• Four league contests - Best three results from four contests
• Three league contests - Best two results from three contests
• Two league contests - Best two results from two contests

(b) In the event that more than one competitor achieves the exact same total annual BMFA league score, then a countback system shall be used to determine the final annual BMFA league placings, with a competitors 6th best contest scores being compared to determine who has the higher placing (and 7th best contest scores etc if necessary).

[Neil Harrison]

3 hours ago, MikeDLG said:

Hi Neil,

Just to clarify the above.  Is the league score the best 5 scores for the year?  Not the best 6 if we fly 7, best 7 if we fly 8 etc?

Thanks for clarifying Paul R 
 

We requested this local rule change as we now fly more contests than in previous years, typically in the last 3-4 years we have had 10 scheduled competitions, so the theory behind the change was two fold.

Firstly, now we are scheduling more competitions, there was a fear that the number of competitors registering for each contest would be diluted, as potentially they would be able to only attend 4 competitions to have a qualifying league position at the end of the year.  Therefore having the best 5 should hopefully increase the number of competitors at each event.

Secondly, as the standard of flying has increased over the last few years, we wanted to make the league even more competitive.  Together with the FAI rule change for dropping your lowest scored round from 12 completed rounds to only 6, we are hoping that there will be more competition for the top 3 team places.