Day 3 - Sunday 10 June

When the sun rose, the sky quickly appeared bright blue. The last round of F3A competition could begin on schedule and flights went on rapid succession. It was quickly decided to hold the final round at noon during the lunch break. A good decision it was, as clouds began appearing early and, even with no fear of rain, light was decreasing. Not the best of things for spectators. As the competition was not really official (it could not be on the FAI calendar as the class was not adopted at that time) and because it was invitational, the decision was made to have all six pilots fly the finals, if only for the spectators but also to collect more useful data about the present rules and the way competitions should be run.

While the F3A competitors were flying I had again to take care of lacking music. Finding a 4-minute song for Yves van Gompel and burning a couple more CDs for other pilots. As it happened by the time the F3A judges went for lunch the competition was almost over with less than 6 F3A competitors remaining, so there was no hurry and no risk of being overtime. The starting order was made according to the standing classification at the end of Qualifications and it just happened to be the same as at the end of the Preliminary round.

Compulsory music
Again 4 pilots chose 4-minute music # 1 while Yves van Gompel, starting first, chose # 2, which he almost discovered on the spot. He made the best out of it, obviously reacting out of time to the changes of tempo but varying his flying. Certainly tense for him! Benoit Dierickx scored well on artistic and general impression, lower on technique. To the surprise of many Stephane Carrier scored pretty well on technique, lost a little on artistic ability but still displaying an impressive performance for this 14-year old schoolboy. Marco Benincasa did somewhat better on artistic. Then Quique just scored a little higher on everything, his lowest score being a 4 (out of 5) in the "positioning" section of the General impression column. Finally Christophe Paysant-Le Roux won some, lost some to finish 2.5 points behind Quique on this flight.

The scores were :

The last flight was to be the 4-minute to the free music. There I saw (and heard!) again the little detail that prevents getting the highest scores: lack of rhythm changes, and believe me during a 4-minute flight this can be quite tiring when you have a score sheet in front of you, waiting to tick a box on the "Contrasting periods" line. This is definitely where Quique lost some points as his song was on a constant rhythm from beginning to conclusion and the same miss appeared on Benoit's choice. On the other hand, Christophe used his well-known music from the IAM and TOC with two contrasting periods of different rhythms, although not always flying in rhythm. But his choice of music did allow some periods of pure creativity.

Placing immediately behind these two champions in the freestyle flight, Stef obviously enjoyed his flight and his songs as much as his father enjoyed spending some time on the computer assembling two contrasting pieces. The result was definitely a success, although Stef was flying his old Tornado F3A plane as his new AA machine was not yet ready. All his scores for this flight were very close to Marcos' scores, just a tad lower, on average, in precision and artistic sense, something, which will undoubtedly readily improve with age and experience.

Benoit has a vast experience of flying to music at demos and large scale aerobatics freestyle events, but he is not yet accustomed flying a really built-up schedule in a defined time frame and this showed again here, specially as his music, while graceful and inspiring, was lacking contrast and rhythm changes. Also, as it was a song previously prepared for demo flights and un-retouched, it was too long and had to be cut at the end of the four minutes, so that the flight was finding a rather abrupt end.

As for Yves, he did without a doubt his best flight in the contest and obviously enjoyed it. He learned immensely and is ready attending the next competition.

You could expect it, of course, but the fight between Quique Somenzini and Christophe Paysant-Le Roux was as tight as could have been hoped for with Quique finally winning by a very slight edge, but rightly deserved. On this occasion he proved slightly more inventive than Christophe and most of the time slightly more in agreement with the beats of his songs.

Here are the results of the last flight:

A very good start

Whatever the final result (after all, it was the very first contest and we would not ask the pilots to display a refined and polished performance with so little preparation), we can say that the contest has been a great success, satisfying both contestants and spectators. More pilots are preparing planes for the event, some are already practising and we heard already of possible competition in several countries.
Basically the rules proved their worth. A few adjustments may prove necessary, particularly in the penalty system to make it easier, but nothing serious. We are now waiting for the next contest in which, hopefully, a helicopter event will be added.

Last, let me say a warm "thank you" to Pascal Blauel and all the team from the Romilly Model Club for their enthusiastic and unending support as well as their faultless organisation. Without them, we would still be waiting for that first ever Artistic Aerobatics competition to happen.

Day Two

Picture Gallery