International Postal Contest Spring 2013

7. April 2013

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 2013 Report:

Hello to everybody

Eastern holydays forced us to put the flying for the IPC from the last weekend of March to Sunday 7. of April.
Sunday morning a not very promising heavy overcast sky motivated us to postpone the flying until afternoon with hope for better conditions.
Afternoon the weather was not realy better - a complete overcast sky with low ceiling clouds, rather strong and cold winds with temperatures of only 7–9 degrees Celsius.
The fog covered mountains permitted no group photo with the main mountain STOCKHORN in center of picture as we normaly do by tradition - the peak stood covered by clouds the hole afternoon.
Ten Pilots entered the field and we started flying into rather strong winds which gave us very good tow heights from hand tow and electric winch.
Astonishingly - there was plenty of lift available for the first rounds – but as winds changed direction the air became more and more turbulent and tricky - thermal bubbles dissipated very quickly.
As always our Landings where not throughout very good - for a lot of pilots it was the first time in the year to fly a contest after this long non modeler friendly winter - the training for regularly good landings was not really sufficient until now and has to be improved.
The models flown where mostly RES Gasbags like the AVA, Cumic plus, Hy-Fly and some own Design but also some modern F 3 J glass slippers.
We hope that this time more than 3 clubs will participating on the IPC – Spring 2012 had real mediocre activity perhaps we should push on the clubs which did not sending in results last year.

Happy flying and always some lift under the wings!

Model Air Club of Thun - Switzerland
Gerhard Läderach