International Postal Contest - Home

The International Postal Contest (IPC) is an invitation only contest held in April and September each year. It is an opportunity for RC Sailplane pilots to fly in friendly competition with fliers from around the globe without traveling to distant locations. Each club's and individual pilot’s score is mailed to a coordinating club who assembles the scores. Unlike other contests, weather conditions vary on the specified days so alternate days may be chosen to allow all participants to fly in the best possible weather.

Each pilot flies five rounds. A maximum of 6 minutes of flight time is imposed for each round plus "landing points” of up to 100 pts may be earned by landing in a landing circle. The closer you are to the center of the circle the greater the points earned. If the flier is in the air more than 6 minutes, one point is subtracted for each second over the six minute limit. Therefore, one round equals a maximum score of 360 time points plus an additional 100 landing points.

Spring 2010 Team Scores

Total of the top five individual scores in each club are combined for the team score.

PlaceTeamScoreInfo
1 Switzerland - Model Air Club of Thun 10,115 Report
2 Michigan, USA - LIFT 8,469 Report
Scotland - Linlithgow MFC N/A Report
Germany - MBC Lengerich
South Africa - Durban Model Airplane Club
Brisbane, Australia - MRSSA
South Africa - Cape Town Southern Soaring Club
New Zealand - Wellington Model Aeroplane Club

Sprint 2010 Individual Scores

Download Spring 2010 Individual Scores Detail

Scotland - Linlithgow MFC

There are no results from Scotland this spring.
Mother nature has conspired to eliminate any glider competitions, by giving us late snow, the Scottish ski slopes are set to be open until early June as they have had over 7 meters of snow!!!!
We had 1 meter drifts on our field at Mount Lothian in early April.
Will try for the Fall competition.
Cheers
Andrew

 

Switzerland - Model Air Club of Thun

The International Postal Competition - Results of Spring 2010 Flying
Hello to everybody

For meteorological reason (heavy rain and some snow) we had to postpone our flying for the spring
2010 IPC Contest from the 28. of March and – as Eastern holydays where the week after - we did
the Flying on Sunday the 11. of April.

We started first with the group picture - as you can see we flew before snow and Fog covered
mountains. At about 10 a clock we started flying with a heavy overcast sky with low ceiling clouds,
rather strong and cold winds with temperatures of only 8 –10 degrees Celsius.
As there was no direct sun exposure - lift conditions where weak and one had to work for the six
minutes - strong downwashes permitted often not very good flight times.
As always our Landings where not throughout very good - for a lot of pilots it was the first time in the
year to fly a contest after the long winter - the training for regularly good landings was not realy
sufficient until now and has to be improved.

Some flew of the club winch and some (mainly the Gasbags!) preferred hand tow – and with the help
of the strong winds - the attained tow heights differed not realy much.
The models flown where of a great variety - mostly RES Gasbags like the AVA, Sagitta, Hy Fly
and some own Design – but also some modern F 3 J glass slippers like the Experience and Stork.
We had a rather good participation with 13 members on the list and finished flying at about 1300
but did not attain a very high score as the conditions where not very favourable.
We soon returned home to warm up with a hot drink and a good snack.
I hope that this time more than 4 clubs will participating on the IPC – last year it was a real mediocre
activity – perhaps we should push on the clubs which did not sending in results last year.
We would do so but I do not have the addresses of those clubs - who can help?
Happy flying and always some lift under the wings!

Model Air Club of Thun – Switzerland
Gerhard Läderach

PICT8506.JPG

LIFT


The 2010 was attended by 9 Members +, 7 Members made flights.
 
Attached are our scores in both Excell and Acrobat formats.
 
The weather was windy, cold and overcast.  However, Dennis made a flight just after our 10 am start and found there was a "ridge" like lift line a few hundred yards straight in front of the turnarounds.  The ridge proved not to be consistent and seemed to be thermals breaking off upwind of us.
 
The wind kept increasing and following lift downwind proved to be a painful experience for many as shown by the low landing scores.
 
As the day progressed the wind increased and the thermals got more treacherous.  Again as shown by the scores.
 
Dennis Hoyle was smart and got all his flights in as soon as he could.  Many of us were not as intelligent, as shown by our scores.
 
Frank Pfeifer was very unlucky on his 4th flight, when he launched his Victory and hit a wind shear at about 70 feet and bent his stab up at about 45 degrees and lost all elevator function.  Will be a bit of work to get the plane rebuilt.
 
We had a lot of problems with the winches with line problems caused by the wind.  It was about 15 to 20 on the ground and my guess is by noon it was 30 or more at 200 feet.  What thermals there were, were moving down wind faster than going up, and not allowing a flier to venture very far following them.
 
Members Phil Diamond and Andrew Gregory were there to give us support, and were wise enough not to fly.
 
Many thanks for the support of all members and spouses who braved the weather and helped LIFT get in a contest.

 

 

MBC Lengerich e.V.

IPC

IPC Contest: