One of the first contests in the European event calendar is the BREITENBACH INTERNATIONAL. Breitenbach is a small town situated in the picturesque area of the Swiss Jura, a mountain range of Northern Switzerland. The flying site was built and is owned by the Breitenbach club. They have called it the "Schwalbennest" which translates to "Swallow's Nest". Quite an appropriate name since we always feel heartily welcome there. The organizer really bends over backwards to make us feel at home and offer us a most enjoyable weekend. The circle lies on the bottom of a narrow valley in a beautiful country site. All engine sound is kept within the steep, forest covered slopes of the surrounding mountains. Wind direction and judges’ placing is sometimes an unsolvable puzzle, causing some exciting moments for the pilots, but we’ve learned to cope with this.

. Also the flight circle doesn’t allow flying full line length - the circle just cannot be enlarged. We’ve all accepted to use somewhat shorter lines - the fantastic scenery as a background for our manoeuvre shapes more than compensates for this neglectable injury. There’s a small meadow for camping enthusiasts. Several good hotels are in close vicinity, providing comfort accommodation, delicious meals, and great Swiss wine - at according prices. This International contest is held since 1973, alternating every other year with the Salzburg International ( Austria ). It’s one of the premier European contests, drawing participants from all over Europe. Since there’s only one circle the contest schedule has to be kept tight. No problem for the Swiss organizer - the event runs with the precision of the proverbial Swiss watch. So practice is somewhat limited - you have to be up very early to find an empty slot. In the past the international control line classes were offered ( speed, stunt, team race ). Recently the speed event was dropped for lack of participation. This year the number of F2C teams was unexpectedly low; for unknown reasons it had dropped by more than half. Participation in Aerobatics was about as usual with 22 flyers from 6 nations. The contest is held over 3 days. Thursday is a holiday in many European countries, so this is used for travelling. Many flyers arrive early. Some even spend a full week on the place, doing practice flights, but mostly enjoying themselves by meeting good friends in a wonderful atmosphere. For many parts of Europe there’s no acceptable flying weather before May, so most flyers showed their last years creations ( even if they had new airplanes waiting for contest operation ). An interesting change was offered by Thierry Saunier of France and Christoph Holtermann ( Germany ). Thierry’s model had been seen last year already, this time with an overall improvement in performance. Only one minor cable contact problem kept him from completing his last flight. Christoph has rebuilt one of his IC stunters , replacing the ST G51 by a Graupner Compact 480. With a 4 cell 3200 mAh battery and APC 11 X 5,5 prop Christoph flies the whole pattern quite convincingly. Being throughout content with the results of the first two rounds, he used the electric model for the third round, thereby even improving his scores. The weather gods presented us with the most pleasant conditions which is not the norm in this place and time of year. I’ve included the results in the table below.

name nation 1.round 2.round 3.round result 1 Serge Delabarde FRA 1078.07 1080.73 1115.20 2195.93 2 Richard Kornmeier GER 1066.07 1074.10 1088.20 2162.30 3 Philippe Gauthier FRA 724.97 961.30 1047.77 2009.07 4 Lauri Malila FIN 947.87 930.10 1022.37 1970.24 5 Christoph Holtermann GER 966.07 974.40 990.97 1965.37 6 Peter Germann SUI 913.23 950.13 970.57 1920.70 7 Claus Maikis GER 894.40 879.23 928.80 1823.20 8 Uwe Kehnen GER 894.90 869.87 913.00 1807.90 9 Walter Weinseisen AUT 849.03 847.47 899.47 1748.50 10 Frank Wadle GER 926.13 796.37 778.53 1722.50 11 Peter Hofacker SUI 904.43 806.20 727.83 1710.63 12 Peter Daeppen SUI 775.47 828.23 837.57 1665.80 13 Thierry Saunier FRA 796.67 800.60 74.53 1597.27 14 Bernard Raffal FRA 783.13 790.53 781.67 1573.66 15 Andre Meyer SUI 719.47 760.57 752.57 1513.14 16 Alex Gauthier FRA 686.67 759.97 719.50 1479.47 17 Ljubomir Radosavljevic SER 712.50 736.97 741.40 1478.37 18 Xaver Bauer GER 664.27 701.43 706.93 1408.36 19 Daniel Baumann SUI 680.07 676.77 703.47 1383.54 20 Wolfgang Gromann GER 636.03 0 677.17 1313.20 21 Urs Stalder SUI 586.13 608.83 626.77 1235.60 22 Frederic Monnier FRA 10.00 710.50 0 720.50

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