NEW Sydney's Gossip Column after the EC F3J in Poland
Read it HERE

Model list from EC F3J.
Made by Jean-Michel Boujon in team France.
Download it HERE as PDF or HERE as Excel

Results of Norway:
- Team placing senior 10th place of 17 teams
- Team placing of juniors 14th place (we had only 2 juniors)
- Senior 4th place Jo Grini
- Senior 34th place Tor Midtlund
- Senior 43rd place Alf Erik Ross
- Junior 19th place Stein Marius Pedersen
- Junior 30th place Fredrik Grini
Total 51 seniors from 17 countries and 42 juniors from 15 countries

15.august - Finished
Juniors are now just landing after last final and Seniors are finished. Jojo managed a wonderful 4th place after bad launches today but good saves. No official results but it seems Primoz Risner is the new European Champion. Big congratulation as he has been close to the top so many times.
Team is very happy and we now will take team photo and get ready for price giving and banquet.
Official results HERE - All photos by Norway HERE
Video on Youtube from opening ceremony HERE
Pictures from Tuomo Kokkonen
NEW Local newspaper 20/8 READ HERE

Team Norway gathered

Jojo eat at the Banquet and flies the finals

Vladimir showed up a couple of cool things. Direct charging 4-18v, monitoring and 5v out different sizes. Ukraine flew with that in Supra's. They also flew a new and stiffer 25g elevator (prototype 28g)

14.august - after first 3 finals
Sorry for few updates this year in the last days of the championship. This is due to the fact that we are more pilots and we got to the finals with Jojo. After todays work we went straight to town for a shower and some dinner with the team. Half of the team goes home before the banquet so this was last evening.
As mentioned we did 3 final rounds for Senior and three for junior. Both had reflights into it. First flight Jojo did a good flight and should have good points for that (have not seen scores as of now). In the reflight of round 1 Jojo fluttered up a damage after a direct tow extreme tow (this model have suffered after abuse and crash 2 weeks ago). We changed 2 servos while the juniors flew and in the second final we went to far with a thermal not going too far up. The conditions here are turbulent and sink below 100m so one really need to go up. But lots of other pilots also landed out. Jojo relaunched but again had to land out for a zero with his backup model the Xplorer 3800. In the third final we got away again with a thermal and got a decent 9:30 something for a good score. So we have a zero that can be gone if we discard after getting the 6th final tomorrow. Everybody struggles in the high winds though thermals are all over. Thermals can be strong but not always so large. Commitment is crucial.
Good night from the Norwegian team that has high spirit and are happy ;)

Superlight fuse broke in heavy launch (7-8m/s thermal) and then the wing went.
Serdar announces the finalists

Jojo pretends to have been drinking a lot..

14.august - preliminary finished
Norway and Jo Grini is in the finals!
By a lucky bad flight of one other he made the finals in his first European Championship. We will fly 3 rounds Seniors and 3 juniors today at 14:00 and then 3 each tomorrow at 10:00.
Winds have been hard today also with gusts at 7-9m/s but the limit is not before 12 and it is mostly psychological since most planes cope well with this. Lots of thermals around to get far back with.

Our best runner Erik Morgan is happy before the finals

13.august - Fourth day
Rain and sunshine. It is late summer also in Poland and we need the umbrellas now and then. Today we did a long day to catch up and we also stopped flying for a while because of rain. There was a voting for 10 or 12 rounds and the large majority said 10 and try to finish on Friday because we wanted a complete championship. On the late meeting we discussed again and off course some teams wants to use the time we have left for as many rounds as possible. This is really up to the organizers but they gave us an opportunity in the morning to decide. We now also decided that we will have 3 rounds finals (gives according to the rules a complete champs after 2) if weather permit on Friday after the last 10th round we have left. Then we have 3 final rounds on Saturday to display and get the winners. Weather forecast is not great with showers tomorrow so I hope we can get a complete championship and a winner called. We have now enough rounds to say who handled it I think. It will be a blast to watch (yes we are probably outside them after some bad flights today). The scores are out but not corrected and the software had some problems after the 9th round.
Conditions today was extreme again. Gusting winds up to 10m/s and LOTS of landings way out there since many gave it all. Lastly we ended with dead air junior round. Hands up to those that do because it is cool to watch. Some midairs and loss of control to ramble the scores. So many good names are faaaar down the list.
We are so proud of our juniors that keeps calm and fly safe. Fredrik Grini got his second 1000p today flying 4minutes more than the number one on the list. So cool. Tor had some mistakes and Alf Erik does not have the correct setup for these sinking and turbulent conditions. Jojo barely hangs in there after going to the extreme range and missing two landings but getting back at least. One round was very bad. We hope a decent result is there after 10th round. We have to be relaxed yet ready for the last one. Maybe we are lucky and get that last final place. Keep your fingers crossed.

balloon in the night - Fredrik bored in the tent - Frequency control!!!

Stein Marius landing meassured

Tor Midtlund shows up the Norwegian colors

12.august - third day
All in all a fairly good day for the Norwegian team. We are not the best but are very proud of our juniors. Fredrik Grini even got his first 1000p in an International competition. Both he and Stein Marius Pedersen flies without any nerves and have fun. Now seated in 23rd and 24th place!! We try to launch them 2-3 seconds after all and take them in for landing 10sec early when they fly full time. Senior Tor is still in a nice position at 23 while Alf Erik had two broken lines (1,55mm and 1.42..). Jojo got one bad one today but is holding of in 10th position.
Conditions was heavy winds but nice weather. Hopefully most felt that the day was not a lottery but a very difficult day that splits the scores as they should do. Many planes broke on launch mostly from hooking line and pure breaking of wings. Lots of the big guns failed today and Sydney's finalist list might be a puzzle. Reigning champion landed far out. German team unlucky with some hooking of lines. Czech team not perfect, etc. Yet It has been fun and the organizing has been going excellent from what I have seen and heard. Some reflights because of crash through the day though. We flew without lunch and to 8'clock. Hopefully the results are on the official site EC F3J, Poland.
Leaderboard seniors - team seniors
Cheerful good night from Poland (now in Czech tent)

Launch - Stein Marius

Photos by Stein Marius

Lamlein left - Norway team Jojo, Tor, Erik


Norway runners Erik Morgan and pilot Tor Midtlund

11.august - second day
Almost a day of waiting since we after two slots juniors (Stein Marius was in one and did fine for him) had to stop because of rain. then they after some hours stopped for the day and let us go shopping. Norwegian team went to an excellent restaurant in the town. It did stop raining but then came on again so the ground is very wet and running would have been slippery and models very wet.

Alf Erik and Wenche - New Perfect's - German rain horn

Cafe - Janne with freeflight - Rainbow behind the offical flags

Hangar left and right

Restaurant in town - Yesterday team UK with Norwegian wannabees

10.august - First day EC
To get everything in shape and learn the timekeepers every notch of how things are we had 2 rounds both for seniors and juniors. Sadly Alf Erik caught the line and ruined one model but got fairly good spirit still as it was not an official round. 5 slots for each and a good long lunch (appreciated in fact) and then we were of with the EC rounds. It was dead quiet on the launching corridor for the first launch and tension was on for sure! Most pleasing today was our juniors that was calmer than us and filled the time in the one official round they got. Stein Marius sadly caught his leg on landing standing slightly close and could have gotten a 98? landing had it not bounced off. Fredrik flew his own thermals and dad took him in for a landing 15sec early for a safe landing. He was not happy with it but dad is ;)
The seniors had 2 flights. One in fairly high winds and one in almost dead air evening with 2-3m/s winds. Jojo did a good first one but lost 25sec in the second round but is ok placed. Tor filled both times but came in a bit late for a 65 landing. Still good placed though. Alf Erik did not reach the landing in the first one and lost a minute in the second (but was only beaten by a few pilots in dead air).
Prelim results seniors - details rd1 rd2- Prelim results junior - team senior

Czech team - Foreign important helpers ;) - 2/3 of jury

Impound - Junior - junior sizes.. ;)

Landing - Team Norway on flightline

Launch - Scoring "machine" ;)

Left and right field seen from outside

9.august 2009 - Opening ceremony
Today we did even more practice and opening ceremony. This is probably the organizers worst day as I think we heard about 8-10 frequency changes after the two team manager meetings. We also had the first medical problem in the team. Jojo woke up with fever, headache and throwing up. After skipping most of the morning TM meeting and sleeping it of for some hours with Imodium he now holds food again (and is able to write this on a cola diet). Spirit is high and while some is nervous Erik Morgan joined us from the WC F3B with stories to keep us up. Knut Vidar Moløkken also took the night here before he went home to Norway.
Lots of pictures HERE

UK team joining us.. for dinner at the field pub

8.august 2009
Still practice day and we registered our models. All well and we did some final settings of our models to suit the conditions that are slightly different than in Norway. Very hot and sink can be heavy so better not be far back on the CG. Tor tested his repaired fuse on his nr.3 model and on a heavy launch the pushrod gave up. But we went over to Samba and bought a new one instead ;) Good with producers on the field! Stein Marius and Fredrik is very new to this and the big fuzz around them but they will cope. Good we have some days ahead. We will also do 2 rounds both seniors and juniors as testrounds. This is good for testing all the helpers and getting people ready. Thanks for this.
Organzers seems to be on track and checking in was simple and nice.

What is wrong in the picture? 10p for correct answer sent to jo(at)jojoen.no
Names, radios and models also needs to be specified.
Names of winners: xxx

7.august 2009
OK we are on site and so are many of the other teams. Site is fantastic. Roads are terrible but the flying site was an eye opener. Camping is good with both water and power. Showers is available they say. Flying site is huge and with no big stuff around other than the hangar (that we have the planes in).
We are no siting in the restaurant having beer with team Germany (with Utz in Norwegian colors) and Team France for apx 1EUR each and 40cm pizza for about 3EUR. Lovely to get confirmation that Serdar Sualp is taking part in the organization.
We all got to fly a bit today as we had our own winch with us (it was too hot to do running on a practice day...better to have a jack daniels afterwards ;)
Oh btw Jojo got to fly 4m Xplorer. Guess they are big this year!!!

Oh yeah we got a girl in the team. Alf Erik Brought Wenche as a good support!

6.august 2009
Team Norway are heading down Sweden today and will take a ferry from south Sweden to Poland. Jojo and Fredrik already started yesterday and arrived at Tor's place for a turnover to Tor's camping car. We will all meet Erik in Poland that comes directly from WC F3B in Czech.

NEW: Team won gold medal as team in the Nordic Championship F3J 2009 and took 1st and 3rd!

Teams for Norway 2009:

EC F3J, Poland - Team site link
Senior: Jo Grini, Alf Erik Ross, Tor Midtlund
Junior: Stein Marius Pedersen, Fredrik Grini
Helpers: Per Pedersen, Erik Morgan

WC F3B, Czech
Erik Morgan, Knut Vidar Moløkken

 

Uncle Sydney’s gossip column - July 2009
Read it all HERE

Jojo kicks and Uncle Sydney times. Photo Nick Kidd

This is the site of the Norwegian team F3J 2009
The link to this place for direct and fast access should be:
www.F3X.no/F3J/2009
Jojo also have a diary HERE
All pictures unless noted Jo Grini

Team Norway:
Seniors: Jo Grini, Alf Erik Ross, Tor Midtlund
Juniors: Stein Marius Pedersen, Fredrik T. Grini
Helpers: Per Pedersen, Erik Morgan
read more about us HERE

Welcome to F3X.no
This site contains all information you need about
F3B, F3J and F3F in Norway.
The text is sometimes in Norwegian...
Beware that for the time being there might besome links
that does not work properly...

Ever wanted to start with something that is:
Fast, Cool, Silent and on the edge of what's possible ?
F3X is just that!

Do you also like to compete with the best ?
And maybe become World Champion ?
There are possibilities out there - Just grab them.
So get yourself a sailplane and start practice.....

As always - the National Teams of Norway likes just that....