Category: F3A

Another great competition with some of Europe’s top pilots took place on the 1st and 2nd of July in Bendern, Liechtenstein. The evening before the competition started, we had fantastic party at Liechtenstein F3A-Pilot and friend Nick Schädler´s home. He organized a barbecue on his balcony with a great view of the mountains.

At the F3A Worldcup, 52 pilots from 16 nations took part and made it into a real mini European Championship. Sadly the weather was bad on Sunday morning and caused a delay of 3 hours. As a result, the final could only include the top 5 pilots, instead of the top 25 as was originally planned.

After the 2 preliminary flights I was 5th and narrowly made it into the finals.

For the finals, I had a very good flight and moved forward to the 4th place overall.

At the price giving ceremony I won one of the most valuable prices: A Swarovski Panther limited to 888 pieces worldwide.
It was well organized event, as is usual in Liechtenstein, and we are already looking forward to next year!

Team RT

Australia, New Zealand, USA, Japan and Germany at the Masters!
After hard practice in the 1,5 weeks before the Masters and the 1000km drive from Melbourne to Sydney, it was time to start the Australian Masters! In Pitt Town on the „Charles Kingsford Smith Model Aircraft Club”, a turf farm 30km outside of Sydney was the competition. Not only FAI F3A-class, also Hobby, Sport, Expert and Advanced took part. Overall more than 40 competitors.

unusual flight conditions -> mid-air collision
A normal grass runway but 2 flight lines on it! The distance between both pilots was at least only 50-100m and both planes flew almost in the same box. That means if 2 pilots fly exactly same distance and height, it could happen that they meet each other in the air. Surprisingly it happened not until the second day of competition. 1 total loss and a badly damaged airplane was the result.

5 of 6 flights for the victory
On Friday we started with 2 flights of P17, the first round was won by AC Glenn from the USA, the second was tightly won by myself. So the first day of competition I finished 2nd. On Saturday, the second day of competition, I changed my style a little, flew closer and a bit faster- more European style. And it was a good decision!

I won both rounds on Saturday of P17, followed by the 2 Americans AC Glenn and Pete Collins. On Monday was the big final with 2 rounds of F17. I could win both flights and that meant the victory of the Australian Masters. Second was AC Glenn, 3rd Pete Collins and 4th Aussie-mate GlennO.

With the victory at the Australian masters I could made our trip also from the competitive side unforgettable!

Congrats to AC, Pete and GlennO, not only for great flying, more for being great sportsmen!
Also to the winners of the other classes and participants congratulations and thanks for the great time we could spent with you!

A special “Thank you” goes to our partners Hacker Motor, JETI model, ORACOVER, PowerBox Systems and rc-factory for making the competition, especially the raffle, to a real highlight!

Luke, Mike and Robbo 🙂

What started with high excitement on 1st of March ended already on the 19th of March.
But in the time between we had the time of our lives- in Australia!

Glenn Orchard, Australia’s number one aerobatic pilot, took us 2 weeks through Australia and showed us the country, the people and many airfields, our target was the Australian Masters from 11th-13th of March in Sydney.

In the first days we practiced a lot, analysed the flights of Australian pilots and flew at the All-Stars Day at P&DARCS (close to Melbourne). The days in Melbourne went so fast and on the 8th of March we drove by car and trailer to Pitt Town, close to Sydney, the location where the Australian Masters were held. Finally we enjoyed another 6 days of sightseeing in Sydney and around until it was “time to say goodbye”- which was very hard!

On this point we would like thank Glenn Orchard, he was mainly responsible for the great success of our journey and especially for providing us his own car.

More important persons who became good friends: Norm Morrish, Russell Edwards, Jason Sparks, Jason Arnold and all the others who welcomed us so fantastically and had so much fun and joy with!

These were fantastic experiences and impressions that no one can take from us and stay forever in our minds and hearts.

Check out our gallery Australientour 2017; Michael and Lukas captured the greatest moments for you!

See you!

Michal, Lukas and Robin

The article about the Australian F3A Masters will be published separately.

Together with my team we will be on an Australian F3A-Tour from 1^st -19^th March 2017.
At first we will attend competitions and airshows in Melbourne and Sydney;  after that we will have some days for Sightseeingtours in Sydney and around.
More information will follow…

From 28^th– 30^th of October the most visited rc-fair of the year took place in Friedrichshafen. Besides the different halls there was also the airshow “Stars des Jahres” took places in the corner of the Friedrichshafen airport, organized by the German magazine FMT. I followed the invitation from Uwe Puchtinger and had together with my time an amazing weekend with fantastic weather! I flew the electric GeeBee and the Tucano with Turboprop.
Philipp Rösner was with me and made 2 great videos of my flights!

Thanks to Uli Neuberger and Michael Setzer for the pictures and the FMT for the invitation!

A special thank you goes to Rainer Hacker, who supported us at the airfield during the preparations and flights in spite of his stress inside the hall!

GeeBee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfArYS-bwxo

Tucano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luZjSDIFW04″>

At the weekend from 3rd to 4th of September was the last competition for the German Championship class F3A in Schiefbahn.
It was the first competition ever, where both associations, DAeC and DMFV hosted such an event together- hopefully not the last! A big “thank you” to Peter Uhlig/Nils Brückner and Maurice Lumm/Peter Claus for bringing both associations together!

It was a great championship, especially because of the outstanding organization by Christian Komfort and Michael Sonnen, who also took part in the competition.
There was never a more professional organization for German Championships- thanks for that!

A big “thank you” goes also to contest director Reimund Schwitalla, who acted very masterly and made it possible, that more than 100 flights can be made on Saturday without any problems.

On Saturday we flew 2 P17 schedules and on Saturday only one more P17 and no final round because of the bad weather.
I could win the competition in Schiefbahn and also the German Championship for the 5^th time. Second was Naruke (Nils) Brückner, 3^rd Andre Bracht- congrats boys, well done!!!

The German team for WC 2017 consists of Nils Brückner, Christian Niklaß and myself. Our Junior will be Elias Leonhard.

Many thanks to my team and our partners for the support in this season!

A great time with friends has come to an end!

70 pilots out of 25 nations have taking part in Untermünkheim. The MFC-Untermünkheim with all the voluntary helpers did an outstanding job and made this European Championship to the probably best of all time!

Here are some Impressions of friends and myself, more Pictures will follow the next days in the EC 2016 Gallery.

Thanks all, who provided those pictures.

A very tough competition in Kaltenkirchen (Germany) in very bad and changing weather conditions made this event to a big challenge for everyone.
blue sky, rain, fog and strong wind- we had it all.

Special thanks to Michael Setzer for being my caller this weekend!
A big thank you also to the Hacker Motor GmbH for the perfect support during the days before the competition!
Thanks to the FAG Kaltenkirchen, especially Manfred Greve and family for hosting this World Cup!
Congrats to Sandro Matti and Nils Brückner who finished 2^nd and 3^rd and all other participants.

More Pictures here

The 50^th international F3A competition in the Principality of Liechtenstein was this season the F3A hotspot! 55 pilots including Giichi Naruke and Yoichiro Akiba from Japan took part. An amazingly organized competition with beautiful weather and a great result for me made this weekend to an absolutely highlight this season!

Congrats to Stefan Kaiser and Lassi Nurila who finished 1^st and 2^nd and all other participants!