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The Swedish indoor championships 1996

The 1996 Swedish indoor championships took place in Idrottshuset; Örebro. This venue has been used several times before, and as usual MFK Nimbus managed to arrange a successful event. In the center of the hall, there is a large lighting armature which always catches several models. Fortunately, it is possible to lower it down to floor height, so the planes are not permanently lost. The time schedule was a bit tight, especially for F1D. This affected those (like Pontan) who tried to fly in (almost) every class.
Just as has been the case during the last years, the scale classes proved to be the most popular, and F1D the least. The junior participation was large in Nocal, but small, or non existent, in the other classes.
Novel for this year was that the international F4F-rules were used in Peanut. The general opinion is that these rules are not very good. They make it is impossible to place well with a no bonus model like a Cub or Lacey, no matter how well it is built. Another problem is that models without visible framework will score low, even if the original used that type of construction. This problem has recently become more acute due to the popularity of the new foam-construction technique, which gives a much more realistic appearance to stressed skin subjects. No foam model competed, but Lars Tolkstam showed an unfinished FW 190. It will be interesting to see if it will fly.

F4F Peanut

Lilienbergs Voisin Canard in flight Note the large rudder deflection necessary	Hartsteins Lee-Richards pistachio fly-by

This was the first time we used the international F4F-rules in Sweden, and as usual, these rules produced ties which had to be settled by fly-offs. Lilienbergs Voisin Canard and my own Drzewiecki Canard tied for first place. The fly-off, which is judged on basis of realism in flight, was won by Lilienbergs Voisin (it really flies very nice). Lilienberg also had another canard, the Bleriot 25, which was untested but proved to fly well. In 3;d place was Sven Pontan, whose Contester made the longest flight but was let down by poor documentation. Georg Törnkvists 4:th place is especially remarkable in that he flew a pistachio, a Pober Pixie. It is both well built (2:nd static place in Interscale 95, in spite of being a no bonus high-winger) and a good flier, but for some reason only managed one proper flight. The other pistachio entered was my Lee-Richards No3 annular monoplane, but its fuselage was destroyed by a rubber breakage after the first flight (Yes, I know I should have used a winding tube).

Remark; when a "- sign" is used instead of a placing number, it means that this competitor has placed higher with another model.

F1D

Sven Pontan had built a variable pitch propeller, the first time such a device has been used in Sweden. Although he had not been able to test it before, he soon got everything together and made a flight of 21:49, breaking the hall record by a handsome margin. Unfortunately, the time left did not permit a second flight, and Lasse Lindén won with two more normal flights in the 10-15 min range.

F1L (EZB)

Sven Pontan and Georg Törnkvist were far ahead of the others. Sven got the best single flight, but on his second flight the plane got caught by that dreadful central lighting armature. When he got it down it was too late for another attempt, so Georg Törnkvist won.

50-Öres

This is a Swedish equivalent to the continental F1D-beginner class. In spite of the limits on rubber (1 gram) and the min. weight of 3 gram, the flight performance seem to be in the same range as the F1L's. Sven Pontan finally got two good flights and won.

NoCal

The tailless Westland-Hill Pterodactyl. From a plan in Oct. 91 Aeromodeller

This has become the most popular indoor class in Sweden, probably much thanks to Tomas Leijon and his Blå Hallen competitions. The durations were not very high, but Tolkstams nice looking Me 108 cleared 2 minutes and became the winner.

Miniflyg (Delta Darts and similar planes)

This class was not very well supported this year. Hartstein won with a Flugan (Delta Dart), while the runner up, Erik Huss, flew a Knott.

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