The
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.
On
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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