So with 10 rounds Iceland Open F3F 2023 is over. The Brits took the top 5 places, well done chaps and congratulations!
The final order of the contestants was as follows:
| 1. | John Phillips | 8.100 | United Kingdom |
| 2. | Peter Gunning | 8.008 | United Kingdom |
| 3. | Andy Burgoyne | 7.681 | United Kingdom |
| 4. | Mark Treble | 7.661 | United Kingdom |
| 5. | Mike Evans | 7.631 | United Kingdom |
| 6. | Siegfried Schedel | 7.579 | Germany |
| 7. | Erik Schufmann | 7.548 | Germany |
| 8. | Sverrir Gunnlaugsson | 7.541 | Iceland |
| 9. | Søren Krogh | 7.441 | Denmark |
| 10. | Armin Hortzitz | 7.413 | Germany |
| 11. | Stefan Bertschi | 7.404 | Switzerland |
| 12. | Christian Gøbel | 7.352 | Denmark |
| 13. | Shao Yuan Liu | 7.284 | Taiwan Republic Of China |
| 14. | Lu Hung Jen | 7.209 | Taiwan Republic Of China |
| 15. | Erlingur Erlingsson | 7.207 | Iceland |
| 16. | Mikkel Krogh Petersen | 6.998 | Denmark |
| 17. | Masanori Ichikawa | 6.977 | Japan |
| 18. | Gudjon Halldorsson | 6.161 | Iceland |
We’d like to thank all the contestants and helpers for the good times on the slope here in Iceland.
Saturday started off bright and early with blue skies and temperature getting close to freezing but with the wind blowing straight on the slope in Helgafell. We were bothered in the beginning by a faulty audio jack on the CD computer but after finding out what the problem was we managed to “hot fix” it so the rest of the day went by without too much trouble.
Due to that the first round took some time to finish with reflights but later rounds were done much quicker. We got two flights under 40 seconds with the fastest time of the day 38.41s, and the competition, flown by Andy Burgoyne in round 3. In the end we managed to fly 7 rounds before the cutoff at 1700 hours. The evening was well spent by fixing the audio jack on the CD computer.
Sunday also started off bright and blue but quite a bit warmer with temperatures around 5°C. The wind was going strong on the slope and the first rounds went quite well. The fix to the audio jack worked very well and gave us no further problems. Rounds 8 and 9 went by quickly but as round 10 progressed we started to see lower wind speeds and the flight times climbing up but thermals came by quite often. But we managed to finish the round and after a briefing we moved up the lunchtime and waited to see if the wind would steady again.
After lunch it looked like the wind was picking up so Peter Gunning was sent off to start round 11 but as he was launched off the edge the wind died down and you could see him go down, down, down. Thanks to some good piloting on Peter’s behalf he managed to stay up, finding a thermal and getting back to land after about 4 minutes. As the weather didn’t seem to be picking up in the next hour we had a briefing and called it a day around 1400.
The forecast for Monday was very variable with no wind from all directions (thanks Erik!) so early on in the morning we drove to Helgafell as that was the most likely spot based on the current measurements of the weather. Lo and behold when we got there the wind was blowing straight on to the slope so our spirits were lifted quite literally by that. While setting up the course the pilots started showing up but the wind started shifting and dying down with lots of thermal activity. After waiting to see if it would pick up the CD decided to call it a day.
The awards were handed out at the bottom of the slope with the main trophy going to England with John Phillips.
