The entry list for Interglide, the only international F3J event of the year to be held in the UK and run to full FAI rules, attracted a larger number of overseas competitors than usual. Two thirds of the entry came from overseas with flyers from: Holland, Germany, France, North Cyprus (Turkish) and, finally, a lone (but very welcome) Japanese entrant. Use of the formal FAI rules means hand towing rather than the customary winches and that, with the ever increasing age of many UK flyers, did reduce the entries from this Country.

The N Cyprus team did not have a great start to their week-end, missing their intended flight due to a schedule mix up so they arrived at their hotel about 4am on the first morning of Interglide and had to leave it again shortly after 6am to be ready on the field for the scheduled start time. Nonetheless in spite of such limited sleep they performed brilliantly achieving three places out of the seven in the subsequent fly-off.

2015 has not seen any revolutionary new F3J models but the favourite types continue to evolve, often with lighter lay-ups or larger span variants appearing. There is an apparent trend towards low set tailplanes mounted on a little pylon in front of a large fin and rudder. This is exemplified by the Maxas and Pike Perfections and a similar trend is apparent on F5J type electric soarer’s with designs like the current Stork. The lightweight Maxas provided remarkable demonstrations of continuing to float about at low level in very light conditions. Nonetheless the other favourites such as the Xplorers, Tragis, Pike Perfects and so on all performed competitively leaving the discrimination as to who won each group in the hands of the pilot rather than in the characteristics of the model.

There were three UK teams; the one headed by Brian Johnston and Mark DeVall initially having a fairly torrid set of scores but Mark and Cegiz Philcox, in particular, scored much better as the contest proceeded. The past (multiple) winner of Interglide, Colin Paddon started well but two poor scores and an “out of field” landing finally placed Colin (uncharacteristically) well down the field. Meanwhile Thomas Rossner from Germany, who was flying as a member of the North Cyprus team, was providing a master class in how to do it, scoring a perfect 1000 points in every single round.

The weather, for once, co-operated and Saturday was warm with a fair amount of sunshine so five rounds were flown and completed without incident in good time to let people freshen up for the evening meal. This was laid on in a local pub, was attended by the great majority of the flyers plus partners, and it proved to be a very convivial evening which was enjoyed by all. The Sunday forecast was for a weather front to move through with rain and so it proved.

The event on Sunday had only just got underway when rain set in forcing a two hour delay. The result was that there was only time for two more preliminary rounds to be completed prior to the fly-off rounds. This was unfortunate as had the planned eight rounds had been possible, the FAI rules then specify the score from the poorest flight gets dropped prior to determining the fly-off pilots. This would have helped Colin Paddon, Ian Duff and Chas Dunster all of whom had a zero score for one round due to a landing out of field. However it would not have significantly altered the fly-off pilots as none had a really poor score from any preliminary round. Peter Allen almost joined this select band of landing out pilots, but on his final flight, he (just) scraped over the boundary hedge so scoring enough to join the fly-off group. The overall standard of flying was, as expected, very high by all participants with any flight time of under 9 minutes 51 seconds (out of time minutes which includes the launch time) and any landing of less than 98 (out of a possible 100) being uncompetitive.

The fly-off then proceeded with Thomas Rossner on his perfect 7000 score plus Peter Allen as the only UK flyer, three N Cyprus pilots: Mehmet Serden, Salahi Tezel and Erel Canken and two of the eight pilots from France: Ivan Moquerau and Robin Galeazzi. Had the fly-off been extended to nine pilots rather than seven, the final two from N Cyprus Eser Kismir (the 2014 winner) and Mehmet Tunabylu would have made up the final pair – such was the outstanding performance of this Turkish team from N Cyprus.

In the fly-off flights, Thomas Rossner gambled by doing a very rapid 180 degree turn to flick off the line at a fairly low height (almost taking out Peter Allen’s plane which was launching in the adjacent lane) but this gamble failed on his first round flight as he did not contact enough lift. Nonetheless Thomas repeated the tactic on the two subsequent fly-off flights with it working on the second but not the final flight. However in the end Salahi Tezel emerged as the undisputed winner with a perfect 3000 in the fly-off rounds, over 230 points ahead of next placed pilot: Robin Galeazzi from France. Thus the N Cyprus team (including Thomas from Germany) were first, third, fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth in the competition – a quite staggering achievement and a worthy follow on from the win in 2014 by Eser Kismir who was then the only participant from that country.

Robin Sleight, 1 July 2015