2012 IITOP, FRANCE

IITOP (International Indoor Tournament of Paris) became very known F3P competition in Europe. For the first time it was organized in 2010 . Since then every year it grows bigger and becomes better. After competitions in 2010 and 2011, the contest is now recognized internationally and it is a major event in the indoor acrobatic world.

IITOP regroups the best F3P pilots in Europe. This competition is official FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) competition and contest was organized by the French club “Les Clayes du Ciel”. The contest was held in the town of “Les Clayes sous Bois“, about 40 km from Paris and 12 km from Versailles. So it had quite good geographic point for most European pilots. This is a big part of success.

This year pilots from ten countries (France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Belarus, Great Britain and Slovenia) were competing in IITOP 2012 competition. Fact that this competition is really popular between European pilots can be confirmed by registration time, to fill all available empty spots took less than two weeks.

Organizers ran competition according to FAI protocol and rules. Saturday before preliminary flight and Sunday before final rounds, after briefing, two pilots, who were random picked, flew calibration flight for judges. Saturday after three rounds there, became clear which five pilots going to compete between themselves for a podium places. Once again, because competition was run by FAI rules final flights had more influence to final ranking. Three best flights from four preliminary rounds were normalized and counted as one round. Which was added to two from three best flights from final rounds.

When you are travelling to competition long distance (in my case it was more than 2000 km one way), one thing you are really expecting is many rounds of flying. Organizers of IITOP definateli provide such opportunity. Each participant had equal conditions to practice and it doesn’t matter in which class you fly. F3P-A International class had chance to fly four preliminary rounds and top thirteen pilots had a chance to fly three final rounds. And if this was not enough every pilot had a chance to participate in F3P-AM (aeromusical class) and Pylon race.

After long day of flying on Saturday organizers held a dinner/banquet straight in same hall where competition was held. This year organizers surprised everybody with huge apple cake which was decorated with eatable planes.

Competition was useful not only for pilots, but for spectators too. Mr. Bert Dalaere from Belgium brought part to his aeromodeling shop “Aerobertics” to competition. In this shop pilots and spectators were able to buy specific F3P related goods, and new “Extreme Flight” planes for upcoming outdoor season.