We have been successful in applying to host one round of the F5B/F5F Eurotour event in the UK. This will be held at Middle Wallop on the 3rd and 4th July.

We are planning on running 3 events - F5B-2 / F5F / F5B - The FAI classes will count towards the Eurotour scores. UK pilots scores will count towards the UK league.

We will be sharing the Middle Wallop field with other two electric disciplines - Speed Cup & International 2 Day Electric Flight Event.

Middle Wallop is a huge grass area and if the weather is kind should be ideal practice for the F5B World Championships (Muncie, USA).

As plans develop for the event they will be posted here.   We will need people to run the computer scoring system / judge the bases / time flights / etc.

We would like to get an idea of the numbers who will be attending (competing or helping) - Could you please complete this so we have an idea.

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Nationals Report 2009 

August Bank Holiday, this year 28 - 31 August, sees the largest get-together of UK modelers with about 10'000 people coming for the trade fair, swap meet, demonstrations and of course the "National" championships in all the many categories. F5B took place in a nearby field on Monday 31st. In addition to being the National championship, or maybe even more importantly, it was our fifth league event, see the normal competition results page for the detailed scores.

The day was sunny, dry, good visibility and very high wind. So much so that in an earlier e-soaring competition, on Alan's recommendation, I tried landing backwards with not very good results! The F5B planes were much less affected by the wind, but as the wind was from Base B to Base A the scores were down.

Round 1 was won by George, that's me, to my great surprise. George, Nigel and Joe did 41 legs, not too bad against the wind. Unfortunately Alan had a wing flap servo fail but happily was able to land the plane OK. Round two saw Nigel getting into his stride and winning with a 42, but several people used too much energy fighting the wind and landed early. Round three saw a big push with Nigel making 44 but had to land early, not helped by using a new battery which used more energy. Joe did 43 but also used a lot of energy so that he was scratching at the end and missed the landing. That left me again winning only my second round this year! Round four was again tough. It was my turn to run out of energy and land early. Nigel attempted a subterranean last leg, Alan flew into the sun and lost it for a bit, again happily getting it back under control. So Mark won the round, well deserved as he had put in four four solid no fault rounds.

We had a good event at Shawbury.  Again blessed with sunshine - Thanks Stuart/Lorraine for arranging everything.

The first round was a bit of a disaster for everyone and you could see we hadn't had a competition for 2 months!  Lots of people hitting the limiter and landing early and some not even going up.  Our tame dutchman had a problem with the language and tried to climb at base B after being told to cut a 6 short which was taking ages :D

After round 1 things settled down and we got some good scores in. Jos did 2 rounds with 44 legs which is a PB and given the "slow air" was very good. His plane is very nicely dialed in and he is flying a good course now.

Whilst we await the results to be posted I have uploaded some video footage taken from Base B. http://www.f5b.co.uk/Shawbury%20-%20Video/  You'll need to download the individual files to play them.    The idea behind this footage is to see if we can get an automatic practice system so people can train on their own.

We were invited to the BEFA event at Middle Wallop over the weekend of the 27th June.   Steve and I went to demo F5B to the F5D guys and just to get in some practise on the course.  Thanks for BEFA for letting us crash their party.

 This is a video Darron took of the B1L flying from Base B.

We got some impressive speeds out of the planes - full details here.

2nd place went to an F5B model flown by Steve Burns also Neu and Extreme power and his run was 184.11 but the return was 138.94 so total of 158.4 but only 1 mph between our first runs.  (1512/1D/6.7 - 16x17 slim -5S)

3rd was another F5B flown by Alan Flockhart yet again Neu and Extreme power and his total was 153.1 mph so only 5 mph between them.  (1515/1D/6.7 - 17x18 Green +7 -5S)

We didn't expect the 1515 to be anywhere near as quick as the 1512 but there is a heck of a jump in speed when the motor comes on.

 Footage put together by Darron showing all the fast planes (except jets) at the event.

The UniF5B program enables flight data to be read from a Unilog and displayed in a form convenient for F5B. Using the cursor and variable time scales all Unilog data can be examined, plus additional calculated data on motor time and watt.minutes over different parts of the flight. The data can be stored in a file and retrieved later. An on-line display panel allows the Unilog to be used instead of a voltmeter or clamp ammeter. A third panel allows the Unilog to be set up, with a quick setup for F5B. The program is available on Windows and Linux.

       Windows version

The Windows version uses .net 3.5 which is downloaded free and automatically from Microsoft when the program is installed. It is available on http://www.f5b.co.uk/uploads/UniF5B-20Feb2009.zig for Internet Explorer and http://www.f5b.co.uk/uploads/UniF5B-20Feb2009.zip for others such as Firefox.  Download and unzip the file. Then change the filename setup.aha to setup.exe. Connect to the internet then click on setup.exe. If you do not have .net 3.5 on your computer it will be downloaded automatically for you, and then the program installed. I suggest you just close the HTML directory page that the installation opens to let you see what it has done. Start the UniF5B program from the Windows Start Menu.