Scioly.org

See “Videos” section of this National Free Flight Society YouTube channel (NFFS is th sponsor organization of the Science Olympiad flying events and contributes the $1,000 scholarships for national champions) and see the video titled “Practice Day am part 2”. In this video you’ll see the youngest member of the USA junior team, Odessa, launching her F1D during the first minute of this video (small person in the red jacket in the video). That’s Coach Chuck (a contributor in this forum) next to her. He’s the US Junior Team Coach.

Note that her airplane has a midair collision about 10 meters up and it recovers. This competition is happening in a salt mine in Romania this week 12/12/22 - 12/18/22 and all of the members of the US junior team are also Science Olympiad Flight competitors.

The small piece of wood that you see Odessa drop to the floor just before her launch is a blast shield. The motors are wound so tight and close to breaking, a stiff thin piece of balsa is kept in place between the motor and the fuselage (which is a .015” rolled bass tube) till just before launch to prevent a broken motor from destroying the airplane.

I’ll attach the team Facebook page shortly and some info about the cool airplanes they are flying. 55cm x 20 cm wings and 76cm fuselage length and only weighing 1.6 grams and only powered by 0.4gram rubber motor. The team is putting up 18 minute flights in this 220ft. Ceiling flying site.

These airplanes take about 50 hours to build and each team member has two or three of them.

https://www.youtube.com/@FreeFlightDigest/streams

“….015” rolled balsa tube…” not basswood tube.

The Junior team did well, placing second in the World! It is hard to beat the Romanians on their home turf.

Elijah finished first on the team with two 18+ flights, Quin second with one. Odessa neared the 18-minute mark. She had a super flight going in round 6, but after a missed steer hit the wall and lost about 50 feet. It would have likely been a 20+ flight. Guha had some robustness issues, but putting the SO "Can Do" attitude to work came back and flew every round, notching several competitive flights.

What an experience. F1D is not easy, it is the pinnacle of indoor duration flying. The Salt Mine makes it tougher, as its an unforgiving environment, cold, tall, rough. Planes that fly elsewhere crash and burn here! There are far more adjustments to make than an SO plane. It was a grueling 7 days down in the mine, but the kids came back happy and victorious.

Also note that the World Champion, Brett Sanborn, successfully defended his title. Brett also got his start in SO Wright Stuff..

Coach Chuck

Super job to the US Junior World Championship team and super job by Coach Chuck leading them!

Super job to the US Junior World Championship team and super job by Coach Chuck leading them!