F5J

Competition Category F5J

About F5J

In the F5J competition class, the aim is to fly a remote-controlled glider with an electric motor for 10 minutes from as low a take-off altitude as possible and then aim for a spot landing.

The running time of the motor is limited to a maximum of 30 seconds. The take-off altitude is measured by a technical device in the glider and sanctioned with a point deduction.

The combination of the flight time, the accuracy of the landing and the deduction for the take-off altitude achieved results in the score for the respective flight.

Depending on the weather conditions and the skill of the pilot, this task is sometimes mastered from a starting altitude of less than 10 metres and sometimes more than 200 m are not enough

The pilots‘ goal is to find and use even the smallest updrafts (thermals), otherwise the specified flight duration of 10 minutes cannot be achieved.

F5J planes usually have a wingspan between 3.5 and 4 metres. They are mostly made of carbon fibre, which allows a flying weight of starting at 1,000 grams (12 g/dm² is the FAI limit). However, wooden planes are also sometimes used.

Within a few years, F5J has become one of the most popular competition classes. In 2019, over 500 pilots took part in 26 competitions of CONTEST Eurotour F5J in many European countries.

In 2018, the first European Championship took place in Dupnitsa Bulgaria, in 2019 the first World Championship in Trnava, Slovakia.

Rules (… come later …)

Information for and from pilots (… come later …)

Information for organizers and those who would like to become organizers in the future (… come later …)

Invitation to the F5J CONTEST Eurotour…

…come and take part in one of the many CONTEST Eurotour competitions in Europe. It is an honor and an outstanding flying achievement to win one of these competitions. Each winner receives one of the much sought-after wing trophies. In addition, the overall annual winner receives a challenge cup and the 12 best placed in the overall annual ranking receive CONTEST Eurotour T-shirts. The best Junior receives a special prize. And at the end of the season, non-cash prizes from the sponsors will be raffled off among all participants. So everyone has the chance to win something. Come and join in.

Every year the F5J Challenge Cup is passed on from the previous winner to the current winner.

The winners of the previous annual CONTEST Eurotour and thus the Challenge Cup are:

2023 ITA Tommaso Bebi

2022 ITA Paolo Rota

2021 — (corona pandemic)

2020 — (corona pandemic)

2019 CRO Arijan Hucaljuk

2018 CZE Radek Malčík

2017 SLO Primož Rižner

2016 CZE Petr Malčík

2015 SLO Primož Rižner

2014 CZE Vlastimil Vostřel

2013 SLO Primož Rižner

2012 GER Stefan Eder

This year at the F5J World Cup 2024 in Turin, Italy, the trophy was passed from the winner of the 2022 annual round Paolo Rota to the current winner of the 2023 annual round Tommaso Bebi. The cup will therefore remain firmly in Italian hands for another year.

New scoring system for the anual overall ranking of the CONTEST Eurotour in the competition Category F5J from 2024

F5J CONTEST Eurotour Calendar 2024 (24.04.2024)

Attention: Unfortunately the Apsia Spring Cup F5J competition (11+12.05.2024) in Portugal had to be canceled. Fortunately, Portugal had registered a total of 3 FAI World Cup competitions for 2024. The organizers have thankfully agreed that the Open Pikuinhas F5J / Troféu Ibérico competition will now be included as a two day competition in the CONTEST Eurotour as a replacement for the canceled one. You can find the new date and other dates in the current calendar.

Upcoming CONTEST Eurotour Events

F5J CONTEST Eurotour results 2024 (22.04.2024 – 3/25 online)

To all pilots. Please enter the competitions “exactly” with the name that you officially have on your FAI license and please always include your FAI ID. In the tables here we will only use the names and data of your licenses officially stored in the FAI database. Without this, it becomes difficult, especially within families, to distinguish who actually flew and to whom the points must be allocated. Please do not use nicknames or name abbreviations. So if there are errors on the licenses themselves, you will have to have them corrected by your NAC yourself for next year. If anything is unclear, the entries are made in red. For this or if you see any other errors in the data or results, please contact us at tm.f5j@contest-modellsport.de for clarification. Many thanks for your help.

The following table can only be meaningfully read on a computer screen. The display is simply too small on a cell phone.

Current leaders (22.04.2024):

Senior:

1. Place ITA Alessandro Aramini
2. Place CZE Luděk Novotný
3. Place ITA Massimo Verardi

Junior:

1. Place ITA Fillippo De Luca
2. Place CZE Mikuláš Vostrel
3. Place GER Lukas Dietrich

F5J CONTEST Eurotour results archive

F5J Tourmanager (2024 – …… )

My name is Andreas Freundl, born in 1967 in Gehrden near Hanover / Northern Germany. I grew up there “in” my parents’ mechanical engineering business as the youngest of 4 children and my enthusiasm for technology was literally born in my cradle. The company was my playground and so I grew up between Lego bricks, machine tools, drawing boards for construction and electronic components for machine controls. As a child I learned to program with the first programmable calculators and computers available at the time. As a teenager, I built the first testing machine control with programmable logic controls and wrote measurement data acquisition software for testing machines in research. I later studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Hanover. Today, as a degreed engineer, I lead the family business through the 2nd generation.

I first got into model flying at the age of 13 at school through a model helicopter group and then found my way to model gliding through a school friend. Although I also built motorized aerobatic models and flew them in a few competitions, the silent gliding in the thermals with model gliders became my passion and so as a teenager I participated successfully in many competitions, including winning the German Youth Championship in 1984.

Because of my studies, job and later family, I didn’t get to fly again for many years, until my children were fascinated by finding my old models in the cellar of our house in 2012 and my wife said that I „have to“ go flying with my children now… My children quickly learned to fly and then took part in F5J competitions with me. As a German-Brazilian family, we founded the F5J Team Gerbrany and have since then taken part in many international F5J competitions on the CONTEST Eurotour. My children even took part alternating in the F5J European Championships 2018 in Bulgaria and the F5J World Championships 2019 in Slovakia and 2023 in Bulgaria for Germany and Brazil respectively. Hereby I took on a lot of organizational tasks for the national teams in the background, acted as a helper for my children and took on public relations work including of publishing several reports in Model aircraft magazines.

With the previous F5J CONTEST Tourmanager Uwe Weiß and his son Jan-Niclas, we flew many F5J competitions together. Now that Uwe is no longer actively participating in F5J competitions, he has asked me to take over his duties as F5J CONTEST Tourmanager. Since my family and I have always received support and encouragement from so many others in the F5J scene, it is an honor for me to take on this task and I also see it as my obligation to do my part in preserving and promoting this fascinating sport with its exciting competitions.

In order to realize this in the best possible way in the interests of everyone, I would be very happy to receive suggestions, ideas and criticism from the organizers and participating pilots.

Therefore I am available at any time via the contact email address tm.f5j@contest-modellsport.de.

Kind regards

Andreas Freundl

F5J Tourmanager (2018 – 2023)

Uwe Weiß started model flying in 1976. After a long break, he has been active again since 2008, and since 2015 was also been competing in the F5J class and recently also F5K. His goal is to have fun and to annoy the „big ones“ a little from time to time.

Former F5J Tourmanager (1994 – 2017)

As one of the original founders of the CONTEST Eurotour, Alexander Wunschheim was, among other things, F5J Tourmanager until 2017