BMFA Silent Flight rules for 2025 now available – download from https://contests.bmfa.uk/ (Rule Books tab).
Quite a few tweaks but no major changes:
F5J
- Walking: as before, there is a CD discretion – but the default position is now that walking is allowed.
- 2m models: scores for 2m models now count in both the Open and 2m classes (aligning the rules with what was already the practice). Pilots are reminded that all models in F5J must have a minimum surface loading of 12gm/dm2. (Some 2m RES / F5K models may need ballasting to comply).
- Minimum number of pilots: still minimum 4 pilots per group for the first Round, now 3 per group thereafter.
- Team selection: special arrangements for current GBR Team members where their World or European Championship comp clashes with one of the team selection events. (Makes arrangements of the kind used in 2024 explicit in the rules.)
F5K
- Writes the FAI Class into the BMFA Rules to make provision for a National Championships and for a League. (Organisers hope to hold some F5K comps in the UK in 2025).
FXRES
- Just changes in vocabulary to make things clearer: the terms ‘F3RES’ and ‘F5RES’ are introduced to refer respectively to the bungee-launch and electric launch competitions within FXRES and to distinguish these from the F3L and F5L FAI 2m RES Classes.
(Obviously, it’s the text of the rules which is definitive – not this brief explanatory note.)
Nick Jackson