F3F French Championship 2009 (Séderon)
Pierre Rondel
11/05/2009

 

IMG_8021_DxOThe 6th championship has been organized in the south of the alps by Yves Tirand, our F3F coordinator at the French federation. The competition was held on 3 days with 36 competitors coming from all the country, and being selected when having 3 times more 800 during the year N-1 league. South alps is known for its wind, but also thermal, so everybody knew that we would need lots of round to minimize the thermal lottery effect.

On Friday afternoon, we managed to do a round 0 and 3 rounds. The weather was OK, cloudy but hopefully without rain. The round zero allowed pilots to discover the slope and take their marks with poles A and B, feel the air. Best time of round zero was 35s, that show you how fast can be this big slope without sharp edge !!!!

On Saturday, Starting at 10am and finishing around 7 pm, we managed to complete 8 new round, so a total of 11 rounds. We alternated rounds with huge differences between the best and the worse time, but also curiously round where times were very close around 40/45 seconds. The scores were so close that it was absolutely impossible to guess who was in the top 3, and who was leading the contest. For me, Saturday was a black day with lots of poor rounds. Hopefully I finished the days with a beautiful 1000 pts (35 s) that made me jumped from the 10th to the 1st place between the round 10 and 11. I discovered the intermediate ranking on Sunday morning and was remotivated like never to try to give my best for the last day.

IMG_8120_DxOOn Sunday, for the judgment day, we completed 4 rounds in a very strong wind and lift with some huge thermals time to time. In the 3rd round of the day, Pierre Platon broke the French record with a blistering 30.31s with his Ceres F3F ! This is the new french record that replace Alexis Maréchal's one done in 2002 with 30.8s with a modified Miraj, that has been renamed in Miraj 30.8. The new record has been obtained with a very technical flight, mixing energy managment turn (that Pierre Platon is mastering totally), and half roll / half loop because of some crosswind. All pilots standed up at lap 6 to encourage Pierre and applause for this superb flight, an intense moment of pleasure for everybody ! The rain arrived at the end of the round 15 and force the organizer to interrupt temporarily the round, but we managed to finish the 10 last pilots before the next shower.

On organization side, a big thanks to the pylon judges : Florence, Marie Hélène, Manon, Brigitte, Michel, Christian, Jean Claude, et Paul. This is not easy to stay 4 hours at the pole to beep the pilots, and stay concentrated ! Contest direction was on Paul Eytan Cohen’s shoulders. Paul Eytan did a great job during the week-end. Laurent Lombardo also called “Excel's Man” provided the computing system and support. The Jury (3 people) was directed by Michel Vianay, the new regional federation president. This was the first time he was attending to a F3F contest, and Michel really enjoyed this experience. Michel also helped a lot Paul Eytan with the timing system. A huge thank you to Yves Tirand for organizing this very nice and intense competition. Yves was alone from his club, so hopefully received external help.

So, what to remember after this championship ?

  • The very good spirit and fair play of the competitors
  • A increasing level of the pilots (20 pilots above 900 pts, and everybody above 800 pts)
  • A superb new French record by Pierre Platon with 30.31s with his Ceres F3F !
  • Confirmation of some top pilots like Jean-Claude Tourniaire, Mathieu Mervelet, Philippe Lanes, Olivier Bordes, Arnaud Krebs, Allan Cohen, Rémi Girard.
  • 3 impressive crashes (I should say explosion for 2 of them) where the planes touched bushes at full speed (Thomas Delarbre, Rémi Girard, Arnaus Krebs)

On my side, you can imagine that I’m “on a cloud” with my 5th title of French F3F champion (the 4th in a row) over 6 championship (first was in 2004). I had hard time and it was no easy at all. On Saturday, I was very close to stop to fight and continue just for fun, but I quickly realized that I couldn’t stay like this, it was not in my nature, and that I was just eating my black bread (French expression ;) ).

Below is the the final ranking with planes, the evolutive ranking (that something is looks like shaker J !!!), and the pictures of the competition.

Enjoy!

 

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