International Postal Contest Spring 2015

14. April 2015

Some about the Model Air Club of Thun - Switzerland:
Switzerland is a very small alpine country in the heart of Europe. Thun is a Town of about 40 000 Inhabitants and is situated on the low end of the Lake of Thun. We are directly at the rim of the alps and therfore Thun is also named the Door to the Alps. We - the Model Air Club of Thun are a club of about one hundred members and our Flying Field is on an Army Training Center giving us only restricted acess during weekdays.


 

IPC Spring 2015 Report:

Hello to everybody

for bad weather reasons (rain and even some snow) we had to postpone the Spring 2015 flying from end of march for two weeks - eastern holidays in between – and we flew finally Sunday 12 of April.
We startet first with the group photo - as you can see we flew before heavy snow covered mountains.
At around 10 a clock we started flying with very few clouds and a light southern winds.
The temperatures where gone up from 8 –10 degrees Celsius to almost 20° C after midday.
Regular low winds from the downhill southern direction are usually not very good on our flying field as they normally produce a downwash wind effect.
That Sunday lift was rather weak but real downdrafts where also seldom - lift remained mediocre and very patchy and one has to work for the six minutes.
We had to fly far away to find the mediocre lift patches and if found it was rather tricky to center the model in to the small patches of lift available.
All in all the conditions permitted not to bad flight times at all.
With 13 pilots we attained a good participation level as the fine weather motivated some more to
come out on the field and have some fun on thermaling.
As always the Landings where not regularly good - for a lot of pilots it was the first time in the year
to fly a contest after the long winter - the training for good landings was not really sufficient.
Some flew of the club winch and some (mostly the Gasbags!) prefered hand tow - the attained tow heights differed not really much.
The models flown where of a great variety - mostly RES Gasbags like the AVA, Cumic Plus, Hy Fly
and some own Design – but also some modern F 3 J glass slippers like the Explorer where flown.
About 12 a clock the wind turned and freshed up - the attainable flight times where less good.
Therefore we where happy to finish the 5 rounds of the contest early – short after midday.
We did a good top 5 result and will see forward on the results of the other clubs.
I hope that this time more than 3 clubs will have participating on the IPC – indeed last year
it was a real mediocre activity from the other clubs over the world.

Happy flying and always some lift under the wings!

Model Air Club of Thun - Switzerland
Gerhard Läderach 

Results of Spring flying, Model Air Club of Thun, Switzerland, 2015-04-14