Pierre Chaussebourg |
France |
President |
Pawel Wlodarczyk |
Poland |
Member |
Jorge Cromberg |
Argentina |
Member |
May 22 to 29
Embalse, Rio Tercero, Provincia De Cordoba, Argentina
The information bulletins were good and the organisers made a great effort to obtain good discounts on air transports. There has been some local problems with car rental, which have been solved as local cars and motorbikes could have been rented directly from the next village inhabitants .
The organisers were waiting for the participants at Buenos Aires international airport and drove them to the domestic airport to reach Cordoba with local airlines. Then, the participants were driven by bus or cars to Embalse. This was a wonderful effort which must be mentioned.
The teams were accommodated in the Touristic complex at Embalse in two big hotels. The timekeepers and officials are in a third hotel and secretary and different offices in little bungalows. All these buildings are situated in a wide park, near a lake with very high trees, horses, and thousands of different beautiful birds. Food was served in the three hotels for breakfast and dinner. Lunch was available at the airfield. Food was excellent and in good quantity.
Military airfield of La Cruz is situated at 12 km from hotels, in the middle of very wide meadows with dry grass.
Tents have been held for processing during the contest. There was also a medical doctor on the airfield, with ambulance and a helicopter.
Several starting lines had been prepared in advance which has been practical when needed.
It was held in a stadium at Embalse, with presentations of the teams, model demonstrations, parachuting and aircraft demonstrations.
The most appreciated moment happened when hundreds of children from the local school rushed to the team members, each child giving a flower and a personal message to each participant. This was the first demonstration of the warm hospitality of the South American people
The opening ceremony was followed by an enormous barbecue for all participants
The Chief timekeeper had prepared very good instructions for his timekeepers The timekeepers meeting was very well run and I heard later that the timekeepers had been carefully selected a year in advance and then especially instructed and tested at various contests and championships. They were equipped at each pole with two pairs of binoculars, one of them being fixed on a tripod specially made for the world champs. A special board was used to hold score card, pencil, and a form which had to be filled before each flight, showing the number of the plane, the shape and colour, to help to identify the models in flight. A model of this board will be shown at the ClAM meeting. The tripod was particularly useful and it must be mentioned that there has been no timekeeping problem for the four days of competition. The winning F1C model which did not DT has been timed for 18 minutes until it disappeared in a cloud of dust very close to the ground.
F1A could be flown and finished on the scheduled day.
For F1C, the wind which was too close to the speed limit would not have given the possibility to run the flyoff in good conditions and without lost models. The Jury decided to postpone the F1C flyoff to the Sunday morning
On Saturday the wind became too strong after the F1B 4 minutes flyoff, so we decided to have the 5 minutes flyoff round also on Sunday morning in turn with F1C.
Because of fog in the morning, we had to wait for more than an hour to start the first round for F1C. Then we had the 5 minutes F1B flyoff and later the 5 minutes F1C flyoff, then the thermal activity started and we got the final classification in F1B. But we had to wait until the 8 minutes flyoff to have the F1C winner and the thermal decided who would be the 1989 World Champion.
In these particular conditions of a flyoff in the early morning, it should be possible according to new rules, to have a 7 or 8 minutes flight, as early as possible, out of the thermal activity to avoid such a lottery.
The closing ceremony and Prize giving took place in a theatre with an excellent student choral group from the university of Cordoba. FAI medals, diplomas and trophies were awarded to the winners. Then the traditional banquet followed with Argentinian traditional music and a very warm atmosphere, as usual at Free Flight World Championships.
This 1989 Free Flight World Championship was very well organised and the organisers did so well that it is only when coming back to Buenos Aires that we realised how difficult the situation was at this moment in the country. The Argentinian Federation of Aeromodelling should be congratulated for its hospitality and the success of this championship which will be long remembered.