Five minutes with nine times FAI F3A World Champion Christophe Paysant-Le Roux

When Frenchman Christophe Paysant-Le Roux won the FAI F3A World Championship for Aerobatic Model Aircraft in Italy earlier this year, he became FAI World Champion for the ninth time.

It’s an incredible achievement for this 50-year-old pilot, who has been involved with aeromodelling for pretty much his whole life. But is it still as special the ninth time round? We caught up with Paysant-Le Roux, who lives in Cherbourg in Normandy, to find out.

How to get ahead in spacemodelling, by Russian team manager Alexey Ezzhov

The Russian Spacemodelling team dominated the leader boards at the 2018 edition of the FAI S World Championships for Space Models, picking up around a quarter of the prizes up for grabs.

“At the recent world championships at the Kruszyn Airfield in Wloclawek, Poland, our team claimed about 25% of the awards on offer,” said team manager Alexey Ezzhov. “It was a great achievement.”

Meet 16-year-old drone-racing star Thomas Grout

Thomas Grout, 16, came third in last year’s FAI Drone Racing World Cup: a fantastic achievement for such a young pilot. The talented young racer only started flying drones about two years ago after discovering FPV (first person view) racing online.

With FPV racing, pilots use headsets that are linked to cameras in the drones, giving the impression they are inside the drone, piloting it from there.