Scottish National Championships 31 August/1 September

 

Two days of F3F racing? Excellent!

The forecast had been predicting good westerly winds all week and that was what we got. This did mean that we were on Bishop Hill both days and with the usual easier access not available we had to climb up the front of the hill both days. Phew!

I deliberately arrived early on Saturday and made the climb straight up from Kinnesswood with a few stops on the way. When the slope came in sight I discovered Mark Redsell already there and flying his Freestyler in the big air. Just as I got to the slope Mark Abbots appeared over the edge having climbed up the winding track below the main slope. It turned out he had been up on Friday night for a fly too. Three climbs up Bishop Hill in one weekend? Keen!  

Abbo and Mike discuss tactics

 

I flew my Ascot both days and it was going pretty well and flew very smoothly but I need to tighten up my flying. Having flown my Ascot a fair bit now one thing I noticed early on was that when I dived onto the course from a big climb out and banged aileron over to turn the roll rate was slower than I thought it would be and some adverse yaw apparent. There are fast Futaba 3155s servos on ailerons and I suspect their relatively weak 2kg torque isn’t enough in big air. Time for a change of servo. I managed a few sub-40s so was quite happy. My best over the two days was 35.xx. Over the weekend if you weren’t below 35 in a round you were not in the running. I remember when sub-40 was remarkable!

Robert's P3 get the heave

 

The second day we walked up from the church car park and it was a little easier than the path straight up from Kinnesswood, especially on the way back down. Having said that when I got to the top on day two I was cream crackered for the first half hour or so and needed a seat to recover because I was feeling a bit queasy.

Abbo and his Caldera

 

The wind was stronger on the second day and the shipping forecast was correct in predicting the strength would rise to gale force 8. The shipping forecast is for sea level and at 1300 ft it was at least gale force 10! We had to abandon flying around 3 o’clock when the wind got well above the “legal” limit for competition. I was well pleased because even standing still on the edge of the slope was almost impossible such was the strength of the wind.

 

Trophies

 

Third place Peter

 

Second place Paul

 

 

First Place Mark

 

Fastest time of the competition.

 

It was a great weekend although Peter damaged his Freestyler on Saturday and Tom Foreman was unfortunate enough to badly break his Stinger on Sunday and also damaged his Artist later on:( I hope they can all be repaired and are back in the air very soon.

 

It is Tuesday today and my legs are still aching!