Hi!
I had never seen a F3B competition before and since the WC was held so
close I decided that this is a perfect oportunity to see what it is all
about. I spent there four days (from Tuesday to Friday) and made more than
1500 pictures. At the end of the second day I learned to use the camera to
shoot the planes. Tha camera was Konica Minolta Dimage Z5 - not a SLR, but
quite usable if you are careful. It has 12x optical zoom that brings the
planes to the shooting range at the last 1/3 of the distance run. It also
has progressive and continuous shooting modes that are perfect for
capturing the launches.
The weather was good most of the time - at least for spectators :) Most of
the time, the wind was blowing perpendicular to the winchlines, so the
launches were very interesting to watch, with planes turning away right
after the launch and going sometimes straight over your head at low
height, full winch power. The competition was held on a working airfield,
so there were pauses from time-to-time to let the big planes land and
take-off. The landing area for the duration task was between winchlines
and runaway and almost invisible for spectators. On Friday the wind was
blowing along the winchlines and the landing area was moved to the hangar
side, so we could see the landings too.
Some pictures from the WC are here: http://home.cyber.ee/arne/f3b-album/
(full album in packed form for easier offline browsing -
http://home.cyber.ee/arne/f3b-album.zip - 90MB).
regards,
Arne
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