SOUTH AFRICAN TEAM QUALIFYING PROCEDURE FOR THE 2008 F3J SOARING WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

As with most World Championship teams within the RC Model Aeroplane disciplines, three team members will qualify to represent each country at the sixth F3J Model Soaring World Championship event in 2008 to be held in Turkey.

The principal:
The principals of the team qualifying procedures have remained the same as for the previous F3J World Championship with two pre-qualifying contests of which one counts and one is a throw away. The scores from two qualifying contests count 50% to the final score, the remaining 50% comes from the final team trials contest where the top 10 pilots fly in a man-on-man format, to decide the top three and reserve pilots.

Pre-qualifying events:
A SAMAA registered SA citizen may be eligible to participate in the final team trials for the SA F3J team if they have achieved a top ten position in the pre-qualifying events. Two full F3J qualifying events will be held of which the highest score for each pilot count towards the final team trials qualification score. These events are to be held to the minimum F3J standard of 6 pre-fly off rounds with one throw away (maximum potential score of 5000 each). Only the pre-fly off scores will count towards the qualification procedure and the highest score will be used to obtain your pre-qualification score.

Senior F3J team:
The pilots with the top 10 scores from the pre-qualifying events are eligible to fly in the final team trials contest.

Junior F3J team:
The top 3 junior pilots from the pre-qualification contests will be qualify for the junior team provided they have achieved a score of at least 80% of the score of the top senior pilot in the pre-qualification events. There is no need for the three juniors to take part in a final team trials contest.

Event           Venue                     Date
1st Qualifier   Venue to be confirmed     14 April 2007 
2nd Qualifier   Nationals - DMAC          22 – 24 June 2007

Final F3J team trials event:
The top ten qualifying pilots will be eligible to participate in the one day team trial event to be held towards the end of the year (15 September 2007). In the event that certain of the top ten pilots choose not to participate then the MGA has the right, firstly, to draw in order from 11th, 12th and 13th pilots as per the pre-qualification scores.

The maximum of 10 pilots must pre-arrange frequencies to allow all pilots to compete on a man-on-man format in each round of the final six round event, where the lowest round score is thrown away resulting in a potential maximum score of 5000 for this event.

Event             Venue                      Date
F3J Team Trials   GGFC                       15 September 2007 

The pre-qualification score (maximum of 5000 points) is added to the score from the final team trial event (maximum of 5000 points) to obtain the final score to determine the top three pilots for the SA team with reserves drawn from 4th to 10th place in descending order.

The pilots will then select the team manager and tow men per team (senior and junior), according to an agreed process.

Further information and bulletins will be circulated via the MGASA mailing list as well as the F3J Blog (http://f3j.blogspot.com).