Skip to main content

2024 F4 World Champs

Image
Yellow aircraft with "Skybus" text flying in a clear blue sky.

By Fred Cronenwett | [email protected]

Control Line Scale

As seen in the February 2025 issue of Model Aviation.

THE 2024 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) F4 World Championships for Scale Model Aircraft was held in Romania in August 2024. Peter Bauer is the F4B World Champion and flew his Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander. The USA team also won the Team category! Congratulations to Peter and the USA team on these accomplishments.

Image
Yellow propeller airplane flying in the sky.
eter Bauer’s Britten-Norman BN-2A Islander flies in the F4B class at the 2024 FAI F4 World Championships for Scale Model Aircraft. Photo by Danny Fenton.

The USA team consisted of Peter, Allen Goff, and Mike McHenry. Mike took fifth place overall and Allen earned sixth place. There was a total of 11 pilots from Great Britian, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, and the US.

Another unique item is that there were three Piper L-4H models entered in the competition. Two team members from Poland had an L-4, as did Mike. The Piper L-4 is a military version of the Piper Cub.

2025 AMA Nats

The 2025 AMA Control Line (CL) Scale Nats will be held on July 11-13. The static judging will be done as normal on Friday morning, July 11. In the afternoon, Round One will be flown. Rounds Two and Three will be flown on Saturday, July 12. On Sunday morning, July 13, the final round will be flown.

Authentic Scale will again be offered in 2025. It was dropped at the 2023 Nats because the F4B event was held. The events you can enter are 1/2A, Fun, Profile, Sport, Team, and Authentic Scale.

If you have models, come out and fly at the Nats. Fun Scale is the only event where you don’t have to be the Builder of the Model. If you have a difficult time flying, you can get a proxy pilot. Team Scale is where the builder and pilot both enter.

The entries in 2024 were down from the normal number, mostly because the CL Scale Nats events were not held immediately before CL week when all of the other CL events flew, such as Racing, Navy Carrier, and Stunt. A number of pilots fly CL Scale and other events, such as Carrier. The calendar got moved around in 2024 to support the FAI F2 World Championships for CL Model Aircraft that were held in Muncie.

Plan to register early in April so that AMA can get a head count for the trophies. You can register late, but AMA won’t have the proper number of trophies that are required.

2025 F4B Team Trials

The 2026 F4 World Championships will be held in Buckminster, U.K. The Team Trials for the USA F4B team will tentatively be held in Muncie in July 2025 a day earlier and a day later than the AMA Scale Nats. The F4B Team Trials static judging will take place on Thursday, July 10, and the flying portion will be held Sunday afternoon, July 13, and Monday, July 14. Bring additional models to fly in the AMA Nats while you are there!

If you are interested in trying out for the F4B team, come prepared with your documentation and plan ahead for what flight options you will be using. Some of the options that can be used during the AMA Nats are not available under the F4B rules. One example is throttle control; it is an option under the AMA rules but not under F4B. Touch-and-gos with the AMA rules count as two options but only count as one option under the F4B rules.

The current F4B rules are similar to the AMA Sport Scale rules, but a few areas are very different. Under the AMA rules, both static and flight points are 100 points maximum. The F4B rules are written so that static is 500 points maximum and the flight is 1,000 points maximum. Static under the F4B rules is 1/3 of the total points available, while the flight is 2/3 of the total points available. As you can see, the flight points dominate the overall score under the F4B rules. Another big difference between the two is that F4B does allow you to fly an ARF model, while the AMA Sport Scale rules do not allow you to enter an ARF.

The F4B rules also have something called a K-factor. It is applied to the score that the judge puts on the score sheet for each item. For example, the K-factor for a static outline is 7, and for color complexity it is 2. The bottom line is that the F4B rules put more static points toward outline accuracy and less on other items.

Originality of the model is where points are given if the model is scratch-built or an ARF. A scratch-built model could receive up to 10 points from the judge, and an ARF would earn zero to four points. When you multiply the score from the judge by the complexity factor, the originality points could be as much as 60. There are 500 points maximum available for static. Those 60 points could make the difference.

Static is judged from 5 meters, which is very similar to the distance used for Sport Scale under the AMA rules.

If you plan to use a bomb drop as an option with the F4B rules, you will need to practice because you have to hit a target zone that is identified on the ground—it’s not just being able to drop the bomb or torpedoes. The bomb or torpedo also has to fly through the air in the same manner as the full-scale would have done—so it’s not as easy of an option to perform for a good score as you might think.

If you qualify for the USA team, you have to prepare a shipping box for your model to get it to the flying site. The 2024 F4 USA team shipped all of the models using FedEx freight. The boxes need to be tough so that they can be in any orientation or stepped on.

For contests close to home, we pack the car and drive to the flying site, but world championships require additional planning, such as where to get fuel and other items that you will need at the location. In some cases, the answer might be that you ship an item ahead of time or put it in checked baggage.

Pick your subject aircraft carefully so that you can maximize the flight option points, and document the full-scale air-plane properly for the static judging portion. There is a larger points penalty if the full-scale aircraft had retractable landing gear and the model does not have it. You also need to document the colors of the model.

Image
2023 FAI F4 Scale Results table showing rankings, countries, aircraft, and scores.
The F4B class final results from the FAI F4 World Championships for Scale Model Aircraft.

Broken Arrow CL Stunt & Scale Contest

The original idea behind the National Association of Scale Aeromodelers (NASA) Classic was to have an end-of-the-year contest for both CL and RC models at one location. Finding a flying site that can support both is a challenge because of the space requirements for each type of model.

With traditional dates for the Midwest Regional C/L Championships in Aurora, Illinois, and the Broken Arrow CL Stunt & Scale Contest in the Saint Louis area, there were not many options for when and where a NASA Scale Classic event for CL in 2025 could be held. Instead, NASA has teamed up with the Lafayette Esquadrille CL Club in Saint Louis to hold one contest. The Lafayette Esquadrille Broken Arrow CL Stunt & Scale Contest will be held as normal on September 20-21, 2025, and the club will also host the CL NASA Scale Classic.

If you can travel to the Midwest, there are two contests in which you can fly: the Midwest Regional C/L Championships on Labor Day weekend, and then three weeks later, the Broken Arrow Contest. The Broken Arrow contest is held at Buder Park in Valley Park, Missouri, and features a fully paved circle that can support 1/2A up to larger models on 65-foot lines.

Contest Calendar

The Northwest Regionals will get the contest season started on Memorial Day weekend in Roseburg, Oregon. Check the AMA Event Calendar to see whether the Brodak Fly-In will happen. I presently don’t have any information about it.

  • Northwest Regionals: May 23-25, Roseburg, Oregon
  • Brodak Fly-In: TBD, Carmichaels, Pennsylvania
  • AMA CL Scale Nats: July 11-13, Muncie, Indiana
  • Wisconsin CL Championships: August 2025, Mukwonago, Wisconsin
  • Midwest Regional C/L Championships: August 30-31, Aurora, Illinois
  • Broken Arrow CL Stunt & Scale Contest: September 21, Buder Park, Valley Park, Missouri

SOURCES:

Lafayette Esquadrille CL Club

www.lafayetteesquadrillecl.wordpress.com

Circle Masters Flying Club

www.circlemasters.com

Flying Lines

News of Northwest Control-Line Model Aviation

www.flyinglines.org

Brodak Manufacturing & Distributing Company, Inc.

(724) 966-2726

www.brodak.com

NASA

www.nasascale.org

F4 Scale Team Norway

World Championships 2024 F4B Normalized Results

www.f4c.no/f4-scale-world-championship-results/wc-2024-f4b-normalised-results

AMA Event Calendar

www.modelaircraft.org/event-calendar

Summary

Peter Bauer wins F4B World Championship; USA team excels. 2025 AMA Nats set for July with multiple events planned.

Comments

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.