2022 FAI F3J WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
By Gordon Buckland | gordon@gatorf3b.com
TEKOVSKÝ HRÁDOK IS A VILLAGE near the beautiful city of Levice, Slovakia. There lies a small airfield called Liteam that was built by Jany Littva’s late father, Dr. Jan. Jany (the 2014 world F3J champion in Martin, Slovakia) organized the 2022 FAI F3J World Championships for Model Gliders at this airfield to honor his father’s dream.
For the US team, it has been an exceptionally long preparation, with the 2020 and 2021 dates canceled because of COVID. It was with a great sense of anticipation that the USA team arrived in Levice two days early and settled into training to represent its country.
The pre-contest was flown in hot conditions with a persistent and daily 7-10 mph breeze from the west, which required long sorties in thermals that were deep over the village to the east with every flight. USA pilot Jeff DuVal won the preliminaries, with Josh Glaab and Jody Miller also making the eight-pilot flyoff. The USA Juniors also performed extremely well in the preliminaries, with Sean Summers taking first-place honors and Charleston Thomas placing second.
The flyoffs saw more wind from the west. Jeff flew deep on each of the three 15-minute flights to also win the pre-contest flyoff, with Italian Marco Gallizia in second place and Jany in third. The preparation for the main event seemed to be perfect, and Team USA felt as ready as it could be.
It rained on Sunday (the model processing day), but the forecast for the five days of the World Championships was for dry, hot conditions. Each day saw four rounds of Seniors and four rounds of Juniors.
Day one was good for the Juniors. John Bradley was in second place behind Jaroslav Vostřel of Czech Republic. Sean had to relaunch after landing out in round one, but his confidence never changed.
Charleston suffered some real drama in round four when his model fluttered during the zoom and he lost both aileron servos. He flew the aircraft magnificently on rudder without making many turns and achieved more than 6 minutes and a landing. Both ailerons were hanging down at more than launch camber for the entire flight! Jeff’s campaign hiccupped in round two when he landed 30 seconds early after sloping the hangar for 3 minutes. Otherwise, the team performed well on day one.
Day two saw the team consolidate scores in both Senior and Junior categories as each pilot endeavored to post a solid score in every flight without risk for rounds five through eight. With the drop kicking in after round eight, Josh was in third place, Amy Pool showed her class by moving up to seventh, and Neal Huffman was in eighth. Jeff also flew solid flights to recover to 11th, despite an unfortunate flight downwind that landed out and relaunching for a score that would become his drop. This put the US team in the gold-medal position at the halfway point.
The Juniors saw John lead the way with some impressive flights very deep and with great landings. The great scoring by the Team USA Juniors put them in the lead over Team Germany after eight rounds.
In good spirits, Team USA arrived first at the field each day. Steve Lucke and Chris Burns had to reset four winches and turn-arounds two lanes away every morning. Because we were flying two Juniors in most groups, we had to always have two lanes of winches prepared and maintained daily. Our helpers did an absolutely admirable job in extremely hot conditions.
Day three saw the US team consolidate its position, with Josh taking a relaunch in round 12, but with this score being his first blemish, he retained his third-place position with 10,961 points. Neal was as solid as a rock in fourth place with 10,949 points, and Jeff was fifth with 10,943 points. Amy was also sitting in the last flyoff position of ninth place on 10,913 points.
The Juniors had a nearly perfect day, with all three maintaining 900-plus scores for all four rounds. Jaroslav appeared unstoppable with all but one 1,000-point score.
The final day of preliminaries made most of the pilots a bit nervous. The US team appeared to have the gold in both categories, as long as four more good flights were put up for each pilot. A conservative approach was called for, but disaster struck for Jeff on round 15 as he attempted to stay on launch a couple of seconds too long with his 3.5 and didn’t get the normal booming zoom. In the toughest round of the day, he started lower than the field and was unable to make the light lift work.
Five sailplanes circled low for 4 minutes,
but Jeff was lower and he finally succumbed to take a relaunch for a 6-minute flight to end his individual World Championships campaign. In hindsight, trying to be safe, the team inadvertently changed its approach for the last few rounds and attempted to do something at that crucial moment that the members had not practiced. The result was devastating for Jeff, but he will be back.
Josh, Neal, and Amy all completed their last four rounds in sometimes trying conditions but flew magnificently to take USA to the Team Gold. Amy also eclipsed many to make the flyoff in seventh place, with Neal in the ninth flyoff position.
The Juniors saw Charleston make two epic flights deeper than he ever wanted to go, where he said on many occasions, “I can’t see it.” At one point, I asked him which model was his and he said, “I’m not sure!” It was Charleston’s calm and unflappable manner that allowed him to stretch far beyond his comfort zone and succeed in bringing his aircraft home and finish in second place in the Junior preliminaries.
John had a difficult flight that required a reflight, but he still scored well enough to be fourth in the five-pilot flyoff. John is young but was trained well by his brother, David Bradley. He was a joy to watch all week.
Sean’s flights were amazing, and he came back from last on day one to finish the preliminaries in the fifth and final flyoff position, helping Team USA take the gold medal in the Junior team category.
Friday was the day of reckoning with six rounds of flyoffs scheduled, starting with Seniors and finishing with Seniors. With three Juniors flying in the five positions, we had great odds of success if we could get in front of Jaroslav. With Josh, Neal, and Amy as the three Senior pilots, it would mean that we would be launching and helpers would be retrieving every single round without more than the extra 10 minutes they allowed between each set of two flights.
The first round became a crucial one for both the Seniors and the Juniors. With approximately 8 mph wind and little lift, it was a dance on the tree line to the west. I was throwing for Neal and Charleston in the Juniors, so I spent the entire day with the pilots watching the events unfold.
In round one, Neal quickly established himself on the tree line to wait for thermal lift to come through, and when it did, he
