Author: Peter Vogel

Edition: Model Aviation - 2021/03
Page Numbers: 74, 75
Pattern airplanes and competitors preparing for an aerobatics competition at sunrise

RC AEROBATICS

Pattern airplanes and competitors preparing for an aerobatics competition at sunrise
A beautiful reflection of the sunrise on all of the gorgeous Pattern airplanes as the competitors and their callers prepare for a grueling day of competition!

FAREWELL
AND USA
F3A WORLDS
TEAM

By Peter Vogel | vogel.peter@gmail.com

MY APOLOGIES TO ALL WHO look forward to the “RC Aerobatics” column every other month—I’ve missed a few. I recently took a dream job at a startup (Hydrow; if you need/want to improve your fitness, check it out!) and, needless to say, the pace of work at a startup is considerably different from the pace at a company that’s been around for more than 30 years and employs more than 5,000 engineers! It’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation!

I have put out the call to the RC Aerobatics (Pattern) community to find a replacement columnist. That will let me put what spare time I do have toward maintaining and improving the electronic scribe and RCCaller apps that I produce (I might even produce an Android version of RCCaller!), as well as helping out with the scoring software itself.

I am leveraging my software engineering passion and letting someone else, who is passionate and knowledgeable about RC Aerobatics, take on this column!

USA F3A World Championship Team

Just before deadline for the November 2020 column, the USA F3A World Championship team trials had wrapped up. Unfortunately, I didn’t get pictures in time to make the deadline, so I’m making up for it now!

2020 was definitely an unusual year! COVID-19 concerns appropriately canceled the RC Aerobatics Nats (along with several other Nats events) when we normally would have held the US team trials.

We still need a US team for the 2021 FAI F3A World Championship for Radio Controlled Aerobatics, which was scheduled to be held July 12-19 in Muncie, Indiana, at the International Aeromodeling Center (assuming international concerns about COVID are allayed in the US by then!).

Hence, an F3A-only competition was held in Muncie in mid-October 2020. Many thanks to Derek Emmett for serving as my photographer, as well as competing at the event. I was unable to make the trip because of high-risk household members.

Arranging Call Sheets

Do you ever wonder how those pilots at the top arrange their call sheets so that their callers know how they want to hear the maneuver called? The photo is a great example!

Two people with luggage preparing to depart for an F3A competition
Derek Emmett and Kirt Campbell prepare to depart for Muncie IN for the F3A competition.
A color-coded aerobatics call sheet on a clipboard
Note the color coding and emphasis for areas where critical decisions are needed in a maneuver.

Five Team USA F3A competitors holding trophies
Team USA F3A! (R-L): Andrew Jesky (first place), Jason Shulman (second place), Pete Collinson (third place), Jennifer Kimball (the first US women’s competitor), and Grayson Pritchett (Junior, first place).

First Woman on Team F3A USA

Although women have always been welcome in RC Aerobatics, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that the FAI has created space for each country to have a designated female competitor in the F3A World Championship outside of the top three competitors, similar to having a designated Junior (18 years old and younger) competitor. Welcome to Jennifer Kimball!

Sunrise over an airfield and runway
No competition article is complete without an amazing sunrise or sunset photo to capture the sheer length of the competition day! Photo by Derek Emmett.

SOURCES:

National Society of Radio Controlled Aerobatics (NSRCA)
www.nsrca.us

Team USA F3A
www.teamusaf3a.com

FAI F3A World Championship for Aerobatic Model Aircraft
www.modelaircraft.org/fai