posted Jan 27th, 2015 - The recent 4-way duel between Thunder ISR and Gavroche at the Wind Games 2015 was the latest part of the friendly rivalry that the French and Belgian teams have experienced over the 4-year period, as the Sun Path Products NSL News explained on 25 January 2015.

InTime now also provided the competition videos of the teams in 3rd and 4th place last weekend in Empuriabrava, Spain, and the audience has the opportunity to study the details of the competition and the team specific engineering plans.

Thunder ISR follows the left-hand pattern that teams are using from jump planes with left-hand doors, such as the most popular Twin Otter, while Gavroche comes from the French Pilatus Porter history with a right-hand pattern. The difference between Thunder ISR and Gavroche mirrors the difference between Arizona Airspeed and NMP-PCH Hayabusa.

Wind Games 2015		Rd. 1	Rd. 2	Rd. 3	Rd. 4	Rd. 5	Rd. 6	Rd. 7	Rd. 8	Rd. 9	Rd. 10	Total	Avg
Rank	4-way Open	C,17,6	3,4,M	F,11,15	D,2,5	J,13,N,K	Q,1,O,P	19,22,B	10,7,9	14,G,H,16	L,E,8,12	Total	Avg
3	Gavroches (FR)	29	22(-1)	27	26	27	32	23	26	26	23	261(-1)	26.1
4	Thunder ISR (BE)	25(-3)	25(-1)	27	26	26(-1)	31(-1)	22(-1)	26	24(-1)	22(-1)	254(9)	25.4

Videos: Gavroche and Thunder ISR at the Wind Games 2015

Thunder ISR has also been working with coach Thomas Hughes in the past years and follows the basic Airspeed engineering continuity. However, Airspeed has added a few new options to the team's repertoire, including a new first Opal of Block 5 (Opal - Opal), and Thunder did not copy this option at the Wind Games.

Airspeed also decided to ignore the engineering option in Round 2 (3-4-M) that would bring the front piece back to their original slots after the first page. The additional memory resulted in a 2-point advantage over NMP-PCH Hayabusa in this round. Thunder ISR also did not copy this Airspeed engineering and followed the Hayabusa design for Round 2. Thunder won this round by three points over Gavroche.

Gavroche offered their own unique addition to the engineering options. The French team applied a technique for Block 12 (Bundy - Bundy) that no other top team has used so far and rotated the front piece backwards. The rules allow both directions. Gavroche outscored Thunder by a point in Round 10 (L-E-8-12) and was only one point behind Airspeed after penalties.

There are obviously different ways how to achieve the best scores for a round and a sequence, and the teams try to find the most specific and efficient engineering continuity that fits to the different training plans.

It will still be interesting to see in which direction the Thunder ISR planning will go. Thunder and Gavroche have even more in common than the 4-way history of the last four years. Both teams have 8-way plans at the same time.

Gavroche is the second half of the new French national 8-way team, as the Sun Path Products NSL News reported for the first time on 21 October 2014. Thunder joins forces with NMP-PCH Hayabusa, as the story on 12 December 2014 mentioned briefly. Gavroche and Thunder ISR both will not train much in 8-way. France has set the priority on the 4-way teams, and the Thunder/Hayabusa 8-way project is not supposed to be too serious. Thunder may just pick the best from both engineering sides...