F3b - Multi-Task Soaring - Archive

The concept of F3B was invented in the 1970's by Ferdinando Gale (now aged 80), an Italian aeronautic engineer, at a time when FAI did not have a valid competition class for model gliders. In those times, some competitions ran a aerobatics glider category that did not attract much interest. Ferdi thought it might be nice to have a competition where the same radio controlled model glider would be checked for performance in different conditions, roughly corresponding to the three most characteristic points of the "polar", the name given to the theoretical curve representing the speed-versus-sink-speed of a glider.

Each round of a F3B competition consists of three tasks and all tasks of a round have to be flown with the same model.
 - Task A - Thermal duration - 10 minute flight + precision landing
 - Task B - Distance - maximum laps of a 150m course in four minutes
 - Task C - Speed - four laps of a 150m course in quickest time