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The Degerfors indoor meeting, January 2006

Introduction

This meeting in Degerfors, central Sweden, has become an annual event. It is a combined RC and freeflight meeting with different halls for the two categories. I would guess there were about 100 RC'ers and perhaps 20 freeflighters. The venue was open even during the night, and at least in the RC-hall there was non-stop activity for the entire 30 hours of the meeting! The RC-scene was dominated by the 3D foam flyers, but there were a lot of other planes and helicopters too. Some of them really odd, like this amazing Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek series, built by Per Nilsson. After some trials and modifications, he got it to fly well.


Starship Enterprise     Photo by Sören Gustavsson

Another interesting plane was the little IR-controlled masterpiece shown below, built by Jonas Romblad. It uses home made muscle wire servos for rudder and elevator control. The servos are housed in a small compartment, as it was found necessary to shield them from the wind chill. With its low flying speed, it was really more at home with the freeflighters than with the RC-planes.


Jonas Romblads tiny IR-controlled biplane

Although this is primarily a "fly for fun"-meeting, there were some competitons too. In RC, a slalom and a hovering competiton, and in freeflight we flew F1M, Ministick and Peanut.

F1M

The F1M class was mainly fought out between the Linköping flyers. Romblad, being competition director, didn't have time to do more than one flight.


Curt Högberg with his F1M

Ministick

Three persons took part in the ministick competition. The roof beams made it risky to "scrape the ceiling", and one had to compromise between risk and duration. Göran Hedlunds winning flights were really good considering the conditions.

F4F Peanut

There were four participants in peanut, but as Lennart Lilienberg entered four different models, we actually got to see quite a lot of scale models. The ceiling height limited durations even for peanuts. Lilienbergs Bleriot touched the roof on several occasions, and each time then entered some kind of flat spin and fell down. Lars Tolkstams Piper Cub, which normally would have got the highest durations, had worse luck. It got stuck in such a manner that the nose was trapped in the very narrow gap between two roof beams. It looked as if it would be permanently stuck, but a lot of patient poking with a steering pole eventually brought it down with minimal damage.
My own Handley Page Sayers won't climb very high, and thus had no problems with the conditions. It had been out of trim for some time, but now I finally found a cure (a weight on the right wing tip skid to decrease the banking, as can be seen in the photo), and the model was able to post the highest flight score.

Lennart Lilienbergs Bleriot XXV is prepared for flight, using a winding tube to protect the fuselage.   Sven Pontans Tefft Contester is a good flier, but did not score high in scale due to lack of documentation.

Lennart Lilienbergs WACO got the highest scale score. Read more about it in the photo gallery.   Andrea Hartsteins Handley-Page Sayers ultralight. Read more about it in the photo gallery.

Ikara Junior

Romblad, who organized the free flight competitions, also held a seminar where he helped beginners building IKARA indoor models. A very good idea to get more people into indoor flying. Afterwards, there was a simple competition. Although only two persons posted flights, there were several more flying for fun.

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