I escaped from work early on Friday and grabbed my Spark from
home and headed up to my local low hill (Carrot Hill). I hadn’t planned ahead
and had to use some gaffer tape to jury-rig my 12v charger to the 12v socket in
my car. It looked well dodgy but worked and I arrived with a fully charged model
and transmitter! I then had a very pleasant
hour flying from the old quarry in a good, if rather bumpy, southwest wind.
Trying to fly and catch a picture of my model was a challenge!
I took about 50 in the end!!
Easier once it is on the ground.
The F3F competition scheduled for Saturday was cancelled due
to rain being forecast but when I got up in the morning it looked dry with a
reasonable wind blowing so I headed back up to Carrot Hill to try-out the south
facing slope. The south slope worked
fine with my trusty Spark but within half an hour a rain shower blew through
although this soon cleared. However, I could see more serious looking rain approaching so landed and headed
for the car but got rather damp on the 20 minute walk back. Peter made a good
call cancelling the F3F competition!
Peter had called a practice competition for the Sunday and
seven of us were able to head for Bishop Hill to discover almost perfect
conditions on my favourite hill. I had taken my Ascot and loaded it up with
full ballast (wings, fuselage and joiner) and in the first round I got some
great air and knocked over 4 seconds off my Personal Best. 34.56. Go me!!
Reversals were the way for me all day but others tried
different styles and it was hard to say which was fastest. They all looked fast
in the good air.
Holding onto the models was a challenge in the strong wind.
Launch!
Meercat pose! More ballast?
Sam Smith was unlucky when some dodgy glue holding (not very
effectively) an aileron horn on let go and he ended up buzzing for the rest of
the day. Thanks SamJ
Dave Watson had a problem with his Needle when he lost elevator
control after I launched it and it was looking like a serious crash was imminent
but after some wrestling with the model Dave managed a shallow crash which
resulted in a fair amount of damage but it should be repairable. It could have been much worse. It
looks like the loss of elevator was caused by a poorly designed tail linkage which let go after
a previous landing. What a pain! Dave had to resort to his nippy Cyril for the
rest of the day.
We managed 8 rounds in great air and I headed home with a
new PB and five sub 40 times. My best ever!
