| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
August 16
Today was the last day of Jamboree. We are leaving here tomorrow 17th. We will arrive to Japan on Tuesday 18th afternoon.
F3C WC was eventful as usual. We truly enjoyed Jamboree afterwards. We saw lots of American style 3D flights. We have lots of pictures we could not show you and also many untold stories as well. We will keep updating after we go home.
This will be the last article from US.
August 14
Today was first day of IRCHA. The pictures were taken during our demo flights. SDX is of course flown by Dominik. His machines move too fast for my camera!
We have lots more of pictures, but we are having hard ti me with Internet access at our hotel. We have to wait until later.
Today's best (?) picture is
o
Thanks ladies for your smiles. What is this gentleman's job?
Remember him?
Jeff Green used to work for us with MRC. He was our "man" in US. Now, he left MRC and working for other company in the industry. We heard he was in hospital a while ago. We are grad to see our old friend again.
We see lots of big name 3D pilots here. Many F3C pilots are still staying after WC as well. When you take a walk here, you can see many of such pilots. We hope we can introduce some of them.
This is 8PM. We can still fly here. We had less wind today and look at this. This is not weather. This is smoke from helicopters.
IRCHA Jambore started. This is the largest helicopter event in US, possibly biggest in the whole world. Lot os manufacturers gather from all over the world to do demonstration and booth display. People come from all over the US to fly here. There are lots of big camping cars, some of them belong to manufacturers.
Along with pilots from MRC, we will do as many demos as possible, For today, we made demo flights by Dominik and US pilots with Turbulence.
This event is judt, TOO HUGE!. Many manufacturers show their new products here. We will whoe you some of them.
This is new Futaba model, T8FG 2.4. The right picture is new 90 model from China.
We see lots of vintage Hirobo models such as Falcon 505s or 1980s Bell 47G. According to the owners, they are still flyable. There were lots more of these models. Thanks for keeping them in good shape and bringing them here!
August 12
We see less faces at breakfast table. Many of the competitior left and went home. We left hotel at 9am to prepare for IRCHA. We will keep reporting about this event.
After the competiton was over, we had some time to reconsider what took place during the competition. 
We were very close 2nd place with team competition. However, each pilots made good efforts, like Ito winning WC. You may think we the Japanese should be regularly and easily standing on podium every time. We the staffs accompany pilots for each of competitions and we see that is not an easy act at all. Flight skill for each of our pilots are undoubtedly top of the world. Do we have to mention our team consists of only current and former world champions? Even with such people, results are not guaranteed and we have to see the comptition from beginning to the end. After reading our reports, it could sound Ito winning 3rd WC title was easy victory for him. NO, it was not. After all, there is only one champion in this world.
Hashimoto's 6th WC was over. He is not explosive like when he was younger. Because of his experience over time, his flight is more mature and stable. We would like to keep watching him in the future for AOCC or WCs.
We would like to thank to Sensui for making and leading such a nice team. We should go with the same team again. We also would like to thank Dobashi for lots of his off the field help.
Another F3C WC in Muncie
Hirobo pilot: Kazuomi Tsukahara
Caller: Manabu Hashimoto
Mechanic: Yoshihide Kurokawa
Judge: Shota Kurokawa, Dominik Haegele, Hans Haegele, Greg Gomes, Takahiro Kobayashi
After all of the competition was over, we held another WC just for one guy, Kazuomi, Tsukahara, who came here to help us as Hashimoto's caller. Until 1 hour ago, we were competing hard for the final round, and now the place is empty. He told us he wanted to fly at place like that once in his life. OK, let's do that. We started our own competition just for him.
He did all A schedule maneuvers and finished with autorotation. Photo with his caller on the right.
Hashimoto giving some "advise" to the competitor. Tsukaraha kept saying that to Hashimoto during practice. Now it's time for Hashimoto!
Hey, you are flying at the site of WC. How are you feeling. Thanks for your hard work.
August 11
The long competition is coming to an end. We only knew Ito's position at No. 1 as of last night, the rest was not announced. The battle for podium was up to the final 3rd round today. Dobashi was 1st pilot to go today. It was his best flight of this competition with very high score. Pilots flew earlier could fly in calm wind. Wind blew harder later.
Check below picture for final result.
2 pilots were not shown here. 14th was Lucchi and 15th was Wolfgang Worgas from Austria. Hashimoto ended at 5th, but Ennio won 3rd. Among European pilots, the best result so far was 4th by Ruediger Feil. He could be in better position next time. Ito won 3rd consecutive World Champion title. However, his victory this time was not a big victory like last time. We scored 1,000 only once in the final rounds. Each of the top 3 pilots won each of the rounds. This is 4th year to compete with same schedule and we see pilots getting better and better, resulting in close scores.
Next WC will be held in Italy, somewhere near Venice around Aug 18-28.
The report continued tomorrow. Let me goto bed... So tired....
Tomorrow is the final day of the competition. Sometimes, we feel time passes too fast, sometimes we feel it's finally over. After the WC, there will be IRCHA Jamboree, the largest helicopter event in US. For our business standpoint, Jamboree is more important. Together with our US distributor MRC, we will set up booth here for our promotion. Following people arrived from Europe today for us.
On the right is our 3D emperor Dominik Haegele. Left is his father and mechanic, Hans Haegele. He is also challenging to F3C from this year. He is not in German team yet. He will be there from next year's European Championship. He came to US earlier to watch final rounds of WC. He had interesting conversation about today's flights and scores with Kurokawa. We cannot show that here. We hope we can write about some of the conversations in later time.
Our man today is Ennio Graber. The picture was taken when we learned he was the winner of the 1st round. He is 29 year old single guy from Switzerland. His caller and mother (shown in below left picture) is always crying her boy is still single. Do we have any volunteer here? We guarantee he is quite a nice guy. His job is sports instructor. During winter, he is a ski instructor. We are waiting for long time for first F3C champion from Europe. We hoped our pilot and former European champion Ruediger Feil will be it, but he retired before that dream came true. He is still in 20s and he keeps getting better. Tomorrow, we might see the first F3C champion from Europe.
More pictures from today.
August 10
Final rounds start from today. It is cloudy today. Pilots had some practice inside AMA and gathered at competition site. The game will start from now. We were flying with strong wind. Ito could not finish all of maneuvers due to battery connectors coming off. It started raining during Wayne Mann's flight, who was second from last. After rain was over, last pilot Ennio flew in no wind condition, but rain started again. After second rain, Ennio chose to continue his maneuvers. He scored 475.5, lot more than previous best points by Hashimto's 458. Wayne choose to fly again, but he could not score more than Ennio and Hashimoto. Hirobo ended with 1st and 2nd for this round.
Round 2 started after lunch. Temperature went up and up even with stronger wind. With rain during first round, humidity was also high. Probably it was hottest during this competition. Ito scored 491.5, Scott 489.5, and Hashimoto 475.5 for round 2. JR pilots came back and reclaimed No.1 and 2.
We will have one more round tomorrow. Ito, the defending champion, is almost there. Scott Gray is ahead for race for 2nd. Both Hashimoto and Ennio still have some chance.
For final round, Hashimoto is flying like himself. If there was no rain, he would have been ended top. It seems he just cannot get along with weather and winds.
Whatever happens tomorrow, we will have only one more flight. We heard weather will be good tomorrow. We hope everyone can fly in similar condition. Good luck for Hashimoto, Ennio, and Lucchi!
Here is usual our group photo of all Hirobo pilots. Unfortunately, one German and 2 Chinese pilots could not stay here. Again, Hirobo was largest groups here.
Today was close to 40C. Dobashi taking some rest on left and Kurokawa Jr drinking hald frozen water.
Sudennly, under 40C heat, Dobashi started running. "I keep eating too much beef since I came here, I need to keep my shape" Our helper Tsukahara broke chair on the right. Oh, sorry, our poor chair.
This is how hot it is here. Look at this difference. Who is this guy? Secret....
Kurokawa jr. on right. He is sun of Kurokawa coming here to help his father. He is already behaving like some big guy.
Today's Hashimoto "It's hot. I want to go home. 2 more days to go."
