FAI F3D World Pylon Racing Championships
30th August - 3rd September 2005
(Photos by Paul Board)

The teams and spectators at the F3D Pylon World Championships, held in St. Martin Le Beau, just south east of Tours in the Loire region of France enjoyed three days of world class racing. And to top it all they also witnessed a new world record!

Eighteen teams were entered for this bi-annual event, from as far away as Australia, Japan, Mexico and the USA! And, of course, a team from the UK. Team GB members were selected from qualifying events last year. Flying for Great Britain were Alan Laurie, Paul Bardoe and Paul Board, with their associated callers/mechanics Bruce Illingworth, Barrie Lever and Les Knott. Les also doubled up as team manager.

The event enjoyed particularly good weather with virtually constant sunshine throughout practice and the three days of competition with afternoon temperatures rising to the mid 30's.

One of the things that separate the winners from the 'also-rans' in F3D is the skill of setting up the highly tuned .40 sized engines to suit the conditions and the provided fuel at 'foreign' competitions. Alas the British Team struggled with their set ups throughout the competition. This led to unreliability and meant that they had too many 'no times' or 200 scores counting in their result. So unfortunately the team failed to reach their true potential.

However they weren't the only ones to struggle, with several of the top teams well down the score sheet, notably and in spite of producing the individual World Champion, Australia and also the Americans.

F3D Pylon Racing produces a spectacular event with four models racing at low level and in close proximity to one another at over 200mph. With engines screaming at over 30,000 rpm it's not an event for the faint hearted. Over ten laps the triangular course measures 4km, but taking into account the fact that the models have to fly an oval, the actual flying distance is more like 5km. Race times for ten laps is around 60 to 70 seconds.

But eventual individual winner, 26-year-old Christopher Callow, from Australia managed to beat the World Record by completing ten laps in 56.98 seconds! Paul Board was flying in this same heat and registered 66.43 seconds, which by British standards would have been a very creditable time. Best times of the meeting recorded for our other British competitors were 65.97 seconds for Paul Bardoe and 67.17 seconds for Alan Laurie.

Winners are calculated by aggregate times, with competitor being allowed to drop their two worst times from 14 flights. The title of World Champion is awarded to the fastest individual and also to the fast team.

The individual result was
1st: Christopher Callow (AUS) 2005 World Champion
2nd: Robert Van Den Bosch (NL)
3rd: Paolo Mucedola (ITA)

The Team prizes were awarded to:
1st: The Netherlands
2nd: France
3rd: Sweden

The UK team finished 11th. Individually Paul Bardoe finished 26th, Paul Board 33rd and Alan Laurie 42nd. Bad luck to our GB Team but lets hope for better luck when the F3D World Championships are next held in Muncie, USA, in 2007

Full details and timesheets can be found on the official France F3D 2005 WC website at:
http://france-f3dwc.site.voila.fr/

Team Results Pos. Country Pilots Total Times 1 NEDERLANDS 3 2253.53 2 FRANCE 3 2455.23 3 SWEDEN 3 2489.89 4 CZECH REP 3 2693.92 5 AUSTRALIA 3 2723.42 6 GERMANY 3 2772.17 7 RUSSIA 3 2797.29 8 JAPAN 3 2846.28 9 USA 3 2922.17 10 ITALY 3 3231.61 11 GREAT BRITAIN 3 3721.00 12 CANADA 2 4121.64 13 SPAIN 3 4131.36 14 MEXICO 1 5571.9 15 GREECE 1 5745.79 16 CR TAIPEI 1 5838.67 17 UKRAINE 1 5947.44 18 FINLAND 2 6266.18

Individual Results Pos. First name Last name Country 1 Christopher CALLOW WC AUS 2 Robbert VAN DEN BOSCH NED 3 Paolo MUCEDOLA ITA 4 Richard VERANO USA 5 Marcel HUISMAN NED 6 Barry MURPHY AUS 7 Jaime DE LA VEGA MEX 8 Ray VAN DE KLOCK NED 9 Christian SCHMITT FRA 10 Frank HARROD AUS 11 Thomas ANDRLIK CZE 12 Yoshinori SATO JAP 13 Gerald COORS GER 14 Kenneth MUSTELIN SWE 15 Jean Yves PERRET FRA 16 Christopher WETTERBRO SWE 17 Nobuyiki CYUJO JAP 18 Harold SATTLER CAN 19 Konstantin KRIKUN RU 20 Olivier ALLAIS FRA 21 Börje RAGNARSSON SWE 22 Andrey KISELEV RU 23 Zenow DRAGAN CAN 24 Frantisek HOVORKA CZE 25 Elias SOPEOGLOU GR 26 Paul BARDOE GBR 27 Jiri KLEIN CZE 28 Georg SCHICKEL GER 29 Norbert PROSCHKA GER 30 Craig GRUNKEMEYER USA 31 Yuz-Shiu CHIANG TPI 32 Anatoly LEONTIEV RU 33 Paul BOARD GBR 34 Volodymyr SOSHNIN UKA 35 Randy BRIDGE USA 36 Carlo PERELLA ITA 37 Ranjit PHELAN AUS 38 Nicolas YEPES SP 39 Fernando BANON SP 40 Kozo OOI JAP 41 Roberto CAVALLARO ITA 42 Alan LAURIE GBR 43 Javier LOPEZ SP 44 Antti SAIKKONEN FIN 45 Samuel RIIPA FIN