July 23, 2026: RC Soaring

By Mike Bergerson

Oh man, F5J was intense! I'm exhausted from three days of hard-core flying. F3L began today with a bit of damp ground, fog, and it was really chilly. The sun came out, the damp dried up and you had 40 8-year-olds running around, driving golf carts, setting up high starts and building up their camps at the end of their respective launch areas. It's like when you had your tree house and all your friends would come over to play whatever games or imaginary scenarios you could dream up. This time, it was three-channel wooden sailplanes.

Three to five of your friends shoot little 2-meter sailplanes into the sky, and the only way it works is teamwork. You're laughing and running and patting your buds on the back for a miracle 4-minute flight with landing points. It's supposed to be six minutes but the pilot’s choices and sink really take their toll. Every pilot wants that 6-minute, 100-point landing, and several manage well.

Jonathan Garber's six 1000-point rounds leave nothing to the imagination. Nobody has put points up on him all day. No wonder he's the 5J champion this year. We put six rounds in the books today. Hopefully, we will do the same tomorrow. No matter, this is fun, relaxing, and the best time you can have because you're with your friends, in your fort doing battle with the neighbor kids. Heaven forbid we get our hands on some bottle rockets!

With six rounds in the books, the score sheet says it all. I'll post that in the photos. You should check out F3Xvault for all the individual scores. With a 9-minute window to make a 6-minute flight, and you can try as many times as possible within the 9-minute window, you would think the scores would be bigger… not so much. Enjoy the pics and don't play with bottle rockets unsupervised. That will lead to model sailplane contests like this!

Blue Skies!