F3F Scottish "Summer" league round 5 (actually round 2)

After a three month break we finally managed to hold an F3F competition on Sunday. YIPPEE! It should have been round 5 but is round 2 having lost May, June and July due to weather/numbers.

To be honest the forecast wasn’t exactly encouraging but being a keen and enthusiastic bunch, five of us turned up at East Lomond car park ready to give it a go. In light of the weather forecast most had brought along a DLG just in case. The prediction was for ssw swinging quickly south and then east but we were lucky in that it held pretty much south and straight onto the slope just off the track to the left up to the main slope before the stile.

We set up the course with the right base next to the fence and the left base just shy of 90 metres away to the east which worked fine.

The course from base B taken with my phone

Ewan and his Jedi from Peter's phone (note the steel fence post as centre marker!)

I got some great air in the first two rounds, probably the best air of the day! Just to make things equal I got some dismal air in later rounds. The wind tended to drop very low at times and I completed one round (slowly) later in the day and struggled for a few minutes to get high enough to fly through. 720g of ballast was maybe a little too much. Peter accidentally landed in a similar situation and Ewan pulled off a dramatic (brave) two handed catch of his Jedi as he struggled to fly through with little height and airspeed. From time to time Mike flew some aerobatics on the course hoping for extra points. Some intentional moves and others not-so-much! (nil point). Reversals, bank-and-yank and EM are quite effective ways of turning but stall turns? 


We had a DLG fly at lunchtime which was fun before we got back to the real stuff about 2 o'clock. Not before one of our number lined up his DLG for a hand catch and flew straight into himself!

One from Sam

One more from Sam. Cyril maybe?

It was good to get some flying in despite the very variable and fickle conditions. Plenty of laughs and banter. 

I was quite happy with the way my Cyril performed but must press on with fixing my poor Precision.

Sunday morning on Pole Hill

Saturday looked like a great day but I couldn't escape (gardening :-( ) so first thing Sunday morning I was heading for Pole Hill. I considered going to East Lomond but it was really cloudy and overcast and EL is often clouded over in these conditions so I stayed north of the Tay. When I got to Pole Hill I could see that I had made the right decision :-) because there was a lot of low cloud over the Lomond Hills which stayed there all morning.

Cyril selfie showing East Lomond and Bishop. At that moment the cloud was just clear of the top of EL

I gave my Cyril an airing in the 20-25mph south westerly and had fun fiddling with aileron differential and snap-flap settings. The air was fairly consistent and I was able to get the roll more axial. I could see some small rain showers off to both sides but it never bothered me thank goodness. A few degrees warmer would have been good though.

Late morning the sun tried to put in an appearance and very soon some thermals blew through and my Cyril lifted up its skirts and was off. YIPPEE!!

Cyril at rest

780g of ballast seemed about right all morning. I flew a lot of F3F turns as well as "pumps" (not so good before the thermals appeared) and loops & rolls etc. The Cyril looked good diving along the compression on the edge before pulling up into a vertical roll followed by a stall turn to dive down and repeat it in the other direction. Yee ha!! 

Unofficial F3F Northern Summer League Brantside

15 Rounds in good conditions in a beautiful part of the world. God's own country. 

Landings were easy but daunting. Managed to send my Pike backwards into tussock of grass. Ouch! This forced me to fly my Stinger which was no bad thing. Better get repairing the Pike though.

Great day out and thanks to Peter for doing all the driving again:)