Openscale, Brno-Medlánky, May 26-27, 2007

It's hard to believe that this year's Openscale was already number eighteen. But that is reality and as in many previous years this sult miniscale event took place in traditional date on break of May and June on usual place - Brno-Medlanky airport. And after not very succesfull inovations of last year the organizers, Lubomir Koutny and a few fans around, returned to well-proven scheme of the competition: static points classification on Saturday morning, fligts on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Even the new-old name of the event - Openscale - is more representative than last year's "Brno rubber".

As usual in last years the M-min rubber miniscale in 1/20 scale were accompanied by oldtimers categories BV-1, BV-2, BV-3 and BV-min (but I will omit this category and leave it to someone who is more favourable of those models and who understood the gimmicks of this year point evaluation). On contrary the free miniscale driven by electric motors and CO₂ motors were missing this year. I think it's a shame, but the reality is that no competitors showed up in those categories.

But let's focus on M-min. In static points awarding the respectable amount of 20 competitors and 29 models came together. Koutný bunch was represented by three competitors and six models, and older modelers recognized three other models by Koutný (older ones) flown by other competitors.

However, the number of competitors exceeded the expectations, the "Bended propeller" bar, where static points awarding took place was pretty full. Two foreign competitors reminded us of times when Openscale was trully prestigeous international competition with modellers from all around the world. As there was no extraordinary new model the standing after static evaluation was as usual, Koutný, Stráník, Merta. After Saturday morning devoted to static points awarding the flight program took place after the lunch. Flights were as usual for time limited rounds, on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning one round for hand launch and one for landing gear start from the ground (plate).

The weather is the most significant factor for any miniscale competition. And this year the weather was far from ideal. Whole Saturday we had quite strong south wind, which calmed down only occasionally by the influence of strong thermic bubble. So the strategy for the succesfull flight was clear: find the right moment and aerodynamically clear and fast climbing model and believe that some thermic will be found in higher altitude. Underpowered models for quiet conditions had very difficult position, the wind usually knocked them down and only exceptionally such model made at least one minute flight thanks to thermic. Due to strong wind the competitors had nice jogging practice on Saturday, at least the wind was directed in the airfield direction and therefore most of the models were found and returned back to starting point. But not all the models. The precariousness of the tactics described above was first proved by Pavel Stráník competing with Arsenal VG-39. He expected this model in such conditions to fly by safe fast up and fast down style. It truly went up fast, but thanks to thermic it didn't go down and after several minutes flight the model ended up on the base of far hump. Lubomír Koutný found the right moment when his Kingcobra made one of the few maximums of the round which gave him the first place in total. Jiří Heřmánek showed up very balanced fligts around one minute with both Fairchild F-24 and Arsenal VG-39, the latter one having the best flight results in whole competition and gaining third place. Everybody was hoping that weather will get better on Sunday, that it can't be worse than Saturday. But we were wrong, the wind did not calm down plus it's direction changed to southeast and as it went over the peak not far away the strong turbullence occured. The jury evaluated the conditions as so cruel that landing gear flights from the plate were cancelled and competitors hand launched their models equipped with landing gear. Petr Kolář (finally second place) and Jiří Merta were the bravest "pilots", also Antonín Křižka made a very nice flight with Avia BH.1Exp. In turbulent conditions the low wing fighters showed its advantages, however young Šimon Grůza also made nice flights with Dornier Komet. Other juniors with Komets made nice flights as well and only due to high flight maximum for those large and simple models they were left behind winning Marie Koutna with Zlin.

What would be the final words ? In spite of the bad weather and certain organization problems this year's Openscale belongs to the better ones. Almost all competitors were domestic, but the number of competitors and models proves that miniscale models are still alive, regardless of the competition of RC models. Plus new models and modellers show up, and that is encouraging. Of course there are things to improve, but who never organized such an event have no idea what it represents and some errors always occur. Probably the main problem was with the time keepers (even if not in the M-min category). We should also think about the static points evaluation of older models rewritten over and over again from the values gained on model's first competition. New models are then judged by sight to keep the mutual relations and this results that half of the models are in range of 8 points (from max 100) after the static evaluations, as happend this year.

But enough words, here you can find senior's results and here junior's results of M-min - Openscale 2007. And finally a few photographs:

[Felda]