France is famous for its tourism, cooking, or nuclear tests... but what about modeling, and especially slope soaring? I'm going to try to give you a quick picture of the different things you could be interrested in. So, fasten your seat belt, and let's go for a short trip in the country of cheese and good wine ...
We are very lucky in France, because there are plenty of places where it's possible to do slope soaring, and from the North to the South of our country, the weather conditions are very different. To explain each well known place, it would take a book, but you will find the different main areas on the map below. In Brittany, Normandy, and the North, slopes are not very high (between 50 and 300 meters) and are mainly located on the coast, they have good wind conditions and the air density is important, so there are good places to do F3F or aerobatic flight. You can do upside down flights near the ground (you know, when the fin touches the grass!) without turbulence... Pilots from the Alps often go there during their vacations because of this feature.
The Menez-Hom, a small 300 meters high hill, is a very nice place (in Brittany, between Quimper and Brest). The other main areas are the Alps, the Pyrénnées, the Auvergne, and the Vosges, the different mountain ranges. If you dream of big slopes (1000 to 2000 meters high) with green grass, thermals, and splendid views... you should enjoy this! It's one of the reasons I live in Grenoble. The season is from the end of April to the end of October, because of snow or low temperatures. During summer, there are some period of thunderstorms, so take care of yourself or your equipment. For example, Multiplex transmitters memory is very sensitive to static electricity, and might be erased in certain situations.
However, the mountains are the best place to walk and to fly or to do a French sport which is the V.T.R "vol thermique de relief" (mountain thermal flight) also called "three dimensions flight". I'm going to develop this point later.
I would say that the best season to flight in France, is June or September. The temperature is not to warm or cold, the weather is usually correct, and often windy. For example, in the high mountain, in September, it's common to see thermal brises because of the difference in temperature between the valleys and the summets which is great, that's produce an air current.
French modelers like big gliders very much, and we are "positively"
influenced by Germany. It's possible to start with standard gliders from
Multiplex or Graupner at a reasonable price, then you have plenty of manufacturer,
often German but sometimes French, who sales kits from 5 meters to 7 meters
or more. Some modelers start from a fiberglass fuselage and build the rest
themselves. Some others prefer to build the entire glider from scratch,
making the moulds of the fuselage. This is why you can meet sometimes exceptional
gliders like the nimbus 4 from Marc Haus. The wing span is 9.2 meters,
the weight is 25 kgr and it needs a sandow to be launched. Another incredible
story is the one from Pascal Langlois, who decided, one day, to build a
fully moulded nimbus 3D, with a wingspan of 7 meters. He has made all the
different moulds and the result is fantastic. The kit of this glider is
now available (M.A.P) for the low price of... 13 000 frs! I know, it's
maybe the most expensive glider on the planet, but I would say that you
get the equivalent of your money. It's like a Roll-Royce!!!
We also find, on the French slopes, a lot of old timers (the definition, given by the federa- tion, is "before 1960" for old timers, and "after 1960" for modern gliders). These gliders are often the state of the art of wood building and have needed more than 1000 hours to design and build them. To avoid injustice against one or the other type, there is always two ranking during the competitions. Usually, the contest is divided into two parts like the F4C category. First the static analysis, where judges are 3 meters far from the model with a complete documentation with pictures and 3-view plan, then the flight with a choice of aerobatic figures.
The most important competition for scale model is the "Banne d'Ordanche" at the end of May. Modelers from all over the country and sometimes from Germany, Switzerland, or Belgium come to this big event where 100 pilots (30 semi-scale pilots, and 70 for pylon-racing) meet during three days. Unfortunately, this year will be the last meeting (after 20 years), but promises to be exceptional with plenty of 7 or 8 meters semi-scale models in competition. Why is such event going to disappear? In fact, the date is the only one long week-end in the season, and the place is in the center of the country allowing everybody to come. But in May, the weather is often bad (rain, sometime snow, or fog...) in this area, so the organizers and the competitors have been disappointed from one year to another and the decline was unavoidable.
The F3F is quite new here. Three years ago, nobody knew the meaning of F3F, except 3 people, the Garnier's brothers and Marc Servajean who participated in two Viking Races, in England and in Norway (1992). The problem was that they didn't make advertising or report in French Magazines, keeping the F3F confidential. But things are moving in a good direction now. People appreciate the fact that during a F3F round, you run alone without risk of collision.
Up to now, only pylon races were organized during competition with two categories: wing- span less than 3.5 meters and wingspan more than 3.5 meters. Imagine 4 big gliders (4 meters), run- ning in the same limited space in the small distance of 150 meters... you must be crazy to participate to this suicidal race! The other major drawback of pylon racing is the probabil- ity to be eliminated at the beginning of the race during the first round. Do 500 km to fly only during 60 seconds is a little bit unfair for certain pilots. This is why the F3F start to be popular in France. Easy to organize, because you need only few people as judges, spectacular when the conditions are correct, plenty of suspense when several good pilots fight for the podium, F3F is the for- mula 1 of the slope soaring.
From no F3F events in 1993, we have around 7 or 8 dates to our calendar in 1996. It's not big events yet like the F3F UK league or other International opens, but I hope to set up a French championship in 1997 in addition to a French F3F league. The only problem is that the FFAM (French federation) is not very active, and is waiting for a large audience, and calendar before deciding something... The promotion is made by few motivated people helped by small club, but with the help of the 3 main French magazines. Another potential obstacle to the suc- cess, is the glider. Up to now, it was not usual to see fully moulded gliders, issued from the F3B, on slopes. For a long time, the Ellipse was the only one kit available in our country, and modelers was afraid to use such a glider for slope flying preferring smaller traditional glid- ers for aerobatic flight. But once again, mentalities are changing and the demand for fully moulded glider becomes larger each day. That's why we start to meet Ellipses, Factors (spanish glider), or other gliders from the Eastern Europe.
We can note two things concerning the F3F in France. The first one is
that we have two separate categories (less and more than 3.5 meters) which
allow pilots with big gliders to partici- pate and not to be penalized.
The second one is, because of lift conditions, we have increased the preliminary
time, to get altitude, to 1 minute (instead of 30 seconds). On the logistics
side, We have also developed a chronometer with a big display (using red
high efficiency Leds) to share, in real time, with spectators the performance
of each competitor. The atmosphere during the competition is more exciting,
because spectators participate fully to each run and can see if a pilot
is going to do a record or not.
An other thing is that we have replace the traditional Klaxon by a big buzzer for different reasons. It need only small batteries (10 cells of 1.7 mAh) for a complete day, and the sound produced is not too aggressive for environment (in mountains, there are a lot of wild animals who could be afraid with a big sound every five seconds) or for the pilot who doesn't jump at each turn because the sound is too strong! The sound is sufficient for the audience but stay unobstrusive. Perhaps, you consider that as a details, but if you want to obtain authorization to organize a competition on a particular protected site, it's a strong argument to show that we are respectful of the nature and wild life.
I would say that aerobatic flight is a fashion, which comes back regularly. Pilots like to do rolls or loopings during a flight, but there is no real training where you think the flight like a aerobatic program. It's why, except few good pilots, the level is not very high. It's also true that there is no kits available on the market. Maybe some of you remember the famous AXEL, equipped with a ritz 1.30.10 and variable incidence wings. Recently, the Akrostar from Multiplex has been introduced on the market, and seems to be a nice model for slope and aerobatic flight. Since the Axel, we can note some private initiative like the QUARTZ (2.2 meters, HQ 2/ 9), the Z-ZERO (2.7 meters, HQ 1.5/9) or the JEDI (2.7 meters, RG 14), I designed with Olivier Bordes in 1991.
It's funny to see that there is two approaches for aerobatic glider:
Some people has choose to stay with a wingspan of 2.2/2.3 meters. This
kind of model is very "nervous" but need often good wind condition
to fly well. The other alternative is a greater wingspan around 2.7 meters.
The aspect ratio is greater, the performance in poor lift is much better,
and the aerobatic capability is not deteriorated. It's preferable to use
quadroflap (ailerons + flaps) to obtain a good efficiency. Personally,
I prefer the second approach with a greater wingspan. I like polyvalent
model you can fly all the year, in any weather condition from poor lift
with thermal to strong wind with a big dynamic lift on the slope.
There is only one competition dedicated to aerobatic gliders, but what
a competition! This event held around the 14 Th. of july in the Alpes,
near Annecy. The flight is divided in three different parts: After 1 minutes
to get altitude you have to perform speed race on 100 meters with 5 turns.
Then you choose three figures in a catalogue, each figure having a coefficient
related to it difficulty. For example a simple roll costs less than a cuban
eight. Three judges give you a note for each figure. Finally, you have
to land properly in a limited area with 3 rectangles, the centered one
giving 100 points, and the 2 other only 50 points.
In addition, the quality of the landing and approach is also noted. To
compute the final result, except the landing/ approach points which are
absolute points, the best time during the speed task gives 300 points,
and the best score for aerobatic figures gives 300 points too, The other
pilots can deduce their points easily with the difference during speed
task and aerobatic task. The flight is limited in time (maximum 8 minutes)
and you have a count down for the speed task beginning. Except this two
constraints, you can manage the flight time as you want. This kind of competition
is very interesting because the couple pilot-glider must be on "top"
to success to the three tasks, and the final ranking is significative.
It's a shame that there is no more event like this one, and, why not, a
championship...
PSS is quasi inexisting in France, because there is not enough sites where the wind blow sufficiently. Of course, there are some attempts, but without real success for this category. It's almost the same thing with birds.
Take a big slope, 2000 meters high for example, a sunny day and no or very few wind. Here are the best conditions to practice this sport which needs good weather knowledge, and sometimes a good health. The rules consist of be ready on the top of the slope, the radio turned on, waiting for signs which could indicates the presence of a thermal. But this thermal can be very far from the slope, so you must be sure that you are able to reach this thermal and get alti- tude... if not, you win a good walk. It's possible to complicate the flight with a slope where you have only 2 possibilities: the first one is to land at the top, and the second is to land at the bot- tom 1000 (or more) meters below.
Le Semnoz near Annecy is one of them: a cliff of 1500 meters. This kind of flight is very existing because you have a risk to loose the glider and the radio equipment inside. I can tell you that there is a nice collection of them in some places where it's impossible to retrieve them. Don't be afraid, its not so often. I know a club where they have developed a small transmitter fixed in the glider which emits a signal, every 8 seconds, and with a goniometer, it's possible to localize the model. To practice this kind of flight, a big glider (4 meters or more) is good, because you can see it when it is far from you, and they have good performances. F3B gliders are also good, but be careful with the size of the fuselage, you could have some troubles to see the model in certain angles.
That remembers me the last edition of the "Semnoz" where I landed my JEDI, 3 kilometers far from the top of the slope (1500 meters below). During 30 minutes, without any visibility of my model, but helped by a friend and binocular, I finally reach a small field in the forest. We didn't retrieve the glider immediately, so it stays in a tree during the night. Hopefully, there was no damage on it. As you see, gliding can reserve some surprise... and adventure!
I hope that this report will give you a good overview about what happens in France, and maybe will decide you to come and fly with us.
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