International Indoor Fly In, Nijmegen, Holland - 11th - 12th November 2017 - Part 1

I'd heard very good things about the annual Nijmegen meeting from my friends who go regularly, but with it being late in the year, my problem has usually been that I didn't have enough annual leave left to take the time off from work. Well this year I had no excuse, as I retired at the end of June, so I booked a ferry and hotel and finally made the trip.

It was a three hour drive from Newbury to Harwich to catch the overnight ferry to Hook of Holland, then a two hour drive the other end to Nijmegen. It was good meet up with a group of fellow modellers on the ferry to help pass the time before turning in for the night.

I confess to a certain amount of nerves sitting in the car the following morning waiting for the ferry doors to open, but the journey to the hotel was pretty straightforward. Thank goodness for the sat nav though - how did we manage without them?

The hall wasn't open for flying until around 3pm, so plenty of time to relax at the hotel and grab a bit of lunch before heading over there.

The Jan Massinkhal is an indoor flyer's dream - plenty of space and completely square, with a clean ceiling apart from a rolled up net running across the centre. This did capture a few models over the weekend, but all were rescued using the centre's mobile platform.

The Friday trimming was new for this year, and were able to fly right up to 8pm - a very useful five hour session.

Modellers from ten different countries attended the meeting, with the largest contingents from the UK (there were 17 of us I think) and the Czech Republic, but France, Holland, Sweden, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Finland were also represented.

Saturday and Sunday were full days of competition, but as the meeting is a mix of scale and non-scale classes, it all feels pretty relaxed as you have plenty of time to mingle and chat (or make repairs) during the duration sessions. Scale classes were flown to the same rules that we use at the BMFA Indoor Nationals, the only differences I noticed were that you could enter two models in a class (best one only to count in the results) and that open electric and open CO₂ are flown as separate classes. This is to encourage people to continue to build CO₂ powered models, and there was certainly a healthy entry, especially from the Czech modellers. Such models have become rather an endangered species at the UK Nats.

For the open classes and kit scale, rounds one and two were flown on Saturday, and rounds three and four on Sunday. Peanut and Pistachio also had sessions both days.



Both the quantity and standard of the models entered was very impressive - just have a look at this table full of open class models waiting to be judged! with so many entries it's impossible to feature every model in this report, so I've tended to concentrate on ones I haven't seen before - so apologies if I've missed you out!

There were 24 entries in Open Rubber (F4D), of which no less than 21 achieved at least one qualifying flight of 15 seconds.



My Fox Moth was flying pretty reliably, though it does have an annoying habit of doing a litle wobble just before it comes into land, sometimes spoiling the landing. Still a combination of third in static and fourth in flying was good enough for second place overall, which I was very happy with. Thanks to Michal Gasparin for the in-flight photo. Here is a video of its second flight taken by Youtube user Firenpoyx1, who I know is called Vladimir, but unfortunately I don't know his surname. He seems to have recorded just about every flight at the event!






Well deserved winner of the class was this fantastic Bleriot XI-2 by Martin Huk which came top in static - just look at all the detailing here!



Thanks to Michal Gasparin for this great in-flight shot - I love the Italian flag colours under the wings. Below is a video of Martin's round one flight.






This is Tonda Alfery's Pfalz D.XII which finished 5th in class. I think this model features a foam fuselage with built up wings, like his Pfalz D.III and Albatros D.V. Below is a video of the round one flight in open rubber.





Tonda was also flying this Pfalz D.III in the same class which finished one place behind the D.XII. I couldn't resist buying the short kit for this model to bring home with me - the foam fuselage is an ideal lightweight solution to replicate the moulded wooded fuselage of the original aircraft.




How about this for an ambitious indoor subject? Jiri Dolezel brought along this rather wonderful Vickers 432. As you can see in the video below, Jiri overwound a little for his first flight and was lucky to escape without any damage. Construction is a balsa frame skinned with thin foam.






This really nice rendition of the Bristol M1C was by Czech modeller Michal Krepelka. Video below courtesy of Firenpoyx1 again.






Best flight score in open rubber was achieved by this lovely Rumpler C.1 by Lars Tolkstam from Sweden. Athough the structure was slightly simplified (e.g no scale ribs) the engine detail was outstanding and the light weight of the model meant it had a realistic flying speed, as you can see below. Video by Firenpoyx1.






Richard Crossley had his Lockheed Vega flying really well, with the second best flying score in open rubber and finished third overall.






This is Bill Dennis's D.H.Puss Moth which put in a cracking first round flight, much to Bill's apparent shock! Video by Firenpoyx1.






Robert Pajas had his neatly finished Fokker Universal flying nicely.






Peter Smart brought along this new rubber powered model of an Aeronca Chief finished in the colour scheme of one that he used to fly.




This Tatra T.131 (a Czech license-built Bucker Jungmann) was built by Robert Pajas to his usual high standard.




This neatly finished Lavochkin La 5F by Ondrej Krucky was proving tricky to trim on Saturday and didn't manage the required 15 seconds, but put in two qualifying flights on Sunday.

OPEN RUBBER (F4D) COMPLETE RESULTS

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Open electric (F4E) had 14 entries, 12 of which managed qualifying flights. Winner was Martin Huk with another beautifully detailed model - this Morane-Saulnier Model L.




Richard Crossley had built a completely new Piper Tri-Pacer for the competition, rather bigger than his familiar red and white one, and incorporating more detail.



Interior detail included a full family and their pet dog carved from foam, and the boy in the back seat even has a miniature Sleek Streak model in his hands! The model scored top flight points in the class, helped by wonderful straight rolling landings on th tricycle undercarriage. It's a measure of the quality of the models entered that Richard only came fifth in static judging, but his combined score was good enough for second place overall. Flights one and two are shown below - the landing roll-out on flight two is particularly impressive.






Tonda Alfery finished third in class with his Albatros D.V. Like the Pfalz D.III, a short kit is available for this 1/20 scale model which has a foam fuselage and buit-up balsa and tissue flying surfaces. It's certainly an excellent flyer, as you can see below.






Peter Smart is always guaranteed to entertain the crowd with his multi-engined models, and this time was no exception as he brought along a new and rather sizable Beardmore Inflexible. There can't be too many halls where you could fly such a large model, but in the Nijmegen hall, it didn't look out of place, and kept off the walls (if not the ceiling) the whole weekend.



Unfortunately, as you can see, on it's last flight it climbed rather too enthusiastically up to the roof, and the vertical dive to the floor destroyed the nose. Peter is undaunted, as he has already rebuilt the nose once, and is confident he can do it again.

Flights one and two are shown below. Note Chris Strachan's excellent, almost nonchalant catch at the end of flight one. For flight two, Peter made something of a misjudgement when resetting the flight timer....





Talking of broken models - Peter decided to "retire" the Lanc after crashing it on Saturday and breaking a wing spar. The model has put in many good flights over the years so deserved a good send-off. Peter made repairs and then gave it a spectacular ending of by sending it into the ceiling - this was the result. The motors were swiftly removed and used as spares for the Inflexible!




Vlastimil Simek entered this neat Port Victoria P.V.7 which achieved the third best flying score in the class.






Well detailed and weathered De Havilland D.H.2 by Jiri Dolezel which scored well in static.




Jiri also entered this Pfalz D.III in the class.




Tim Horne had brought his very attractive new Lockheed Altair, but sadly, as is often the case, his best flights were made during the trimming sessions and he failed to make a qualifying flight in the competition itself. To the left you can see Tim's Pistachio Scale Waco SRE.

OPEN ELECTRIC (F4E) COMPLETE RESULTS

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The CO₂ class had a healthy entry of 10 models, half of which were by Czech modellers, who really know how to get the best out of these motors. The hall was much colder on Sunday than Saturday making it tricky to find the correct throttle setting, but it can't be a coincidence that the top four flying scores all came from the Czechs. (they took top four in static as well).



First place went to Martin Huk with this Fokker B.2, making a clean sweep of the open classes - a fantastic achievement!




Tonda Alfery finished second with his Spad XIII, a model he apparently built many years ago, but still looking very smart.



Third place went to Michal Krepelka with this delightful Nieuport 11. It's a shame the only video I got of it was on a flight where it ran out of hall before it could land. Michal did nail the fourth and final flight though.





Robert Pajas's Saro Cloud is a beautiful but very ambitious model - regulating one CO₂ motor is hard enough, but trying to adjust two to the prevailing conditions of temperature and humidity must be a nightmare! Nevertheless, Robert managed to get a qualifying time with his final flight.



This charming Grahame-White Lizzie was entered by George Kandylakis

OPEN CO₂ (F4E) COMPLETE RESULTS

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