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Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Pyrenees cup eurotour F3F

The Pyrenees Cup was the last contest of the Eurotour 2011. In addition it was also the last of the 4 contests entering in the selection of the french F3F team fro Rugen 2012.
29 Pilots from Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, without forgetting our guest from USA, David Cortina.
the weather forecast was very good, and after a superb training day on Thursday, we got 2 windy days in Laurac with gusts between 15 to 18 m/s.
On Friday, after a breifing around midday, we started quickly and managed 7 rounds in perfect conditions. The wind surprisingly was not so crossed. Time to time, a strong thermal was popping, boosting the plane like a rocket. Most of the time the thermal was to short to stay the whole run. I should have won the round one because I got excellent condition on the second half of my run, but because of a very bad and looonng cut, I do only the second time, too bad !
Stefan HÖLBFER flew a amazing 29.83s in round 2, making this round a joker for everybody. People were saying: "just enjoy your flight, and experiment what you want because in any case, it will be your throw".
Jean-Luc Foucher won the next round with his Alliaj, then Lukas the round after. But Stefan was clearly dominating the competition, and on top of that was getting consistent condition during his flights. He won the rounds 6 and 7.
At the end of Day 1, Stefan was leading, followed by Lukas, and myself at the 3rd position.
The second day was similar to the first day, with maybe more crossed wind, especially at the end of the day. Stefan continue to dominate, but Alexis did a very good climb in the ranking to end at the second rank, just above Lukas. Matthieu Mervelet also flew well and placed in 4th Position. On my side, after few bad flights, and too much cuts, I finished the day in 5th position.
Unfortunately Sunday, as forecasted, was a transition day, the wind switching from south east to north west on monday, so after an attempt to complete another round, we stopped the competition and Andreas declared the Pyrenees cup end.







Strong winds means heavy ballast for everybody, so we assisted to several plane damaged, especially during the landing. Personnally, apart 2 flights with my Alliaj HM, I flew all the competition with the Pike Precision and have been very happy with it. Most of the time I fleww full ballast, that is to say 1.7kg of brass, so a total weight of 3.8kg. I have been amazed how easy the Pike could carry the weight, without changing its behaviour, and showing no bad habits at all. Lots of FS4, very impressive, with a flying weigth about 4.9kg, which is the FAI limit of 75g/dm2, several Caldera R, Vampire, FS3, Cyril, Ceres, etc ...



At the end, Stefan won the competition, and Lukas (3rd) won the Eurotour, bypassing Espen Torp by few points. The price ceremony, on the slope, and very friendly, closed this superb and very intense week-end of F3F.

Below is the video of the 29.83s flight of Stefan:






Full results on the organizer website: http://pyreneescup.free.fr/

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