Hello Everyone,
Firstly I hope very much that you are all well and managing to keep safe at this very strange time. As you know due to the current situation, all non essential travel is not allowed which means that our field remains closed to us all for any purpose, so however tempting and however good the weather looks, please do not go to the field. That even means we cannot even go there to cut the grass so when this is all over, we will probably need a hand to tame the grass again. Even though that might be quite a task, its something I look forward to, being back in the company of friends at the club. In the meantime, I have a friend that lives very near the field and will keep an eye on it on their daily exercise walks. I do believe the farmer is busy ploughing at last which must be a huge relief for him!
As you also know, our club nights can't take place either but looking forward, the good news is that the Vulcan Trust talk that we were to have had last month is re-booked for September, so hopefully that can then go ahead. Fingers crossed!
Of course our club events will have to be postponed but we did manage a few weeks ago to get an afternoon of fun fly competitions done, which was a very entertaining day. We managed to dodge the showers and the wind was just about flyable and I think those that were there had a good time. For those of you who weren't there however, here are the results:
Climb and Glide 14/03/20 (20 second climb, turn the engine off and glide for as long as possible)
Name Time Spot Total Position
David C 6-23 Yes 421 1st
James G 4-47 Yes 316 2nd
Gavin B 3-13 Yes 212 3rd
Richard C 3-04 No 184 4th
Matthew B 2-55 No 175 5th
Neil W 2-13 Yes 148 6th
Keith L 1-23 Yes 91 7th
Some really good times there and well done to David with a glide of well over 6 minutes from a 20 second glide with his Fusion! And a special mention to Keith for a great effort and his first ever landing with his Uno Wot and it was a really good deadstick landing too!! As soon as we can fly again, Keith will definitely have his well deserved A test.
Loops and Land 14/03/20 (take off and fly for as near to a minute as possible, but you had to count the minute yourself. While flying you had to complete as many loops as possible! The score was the amount of loops minus any seconds over or under the minute)
Name Loops Time Total Position
David C 51 1-10 41 1st
Gavin B 32 0-59 31 2nd
James G 31 1-06 25 3rd
Matthew B 35 1-12 23 4th
Neil W 18 0-51 9 5th
Richard C 18 1-24 -6 6th
Another victory for David, with an amazing 51 loops. Matthew had the next highest number of loops but time goes a lot slower when you're young so that dropped him to 4th overall, which also meant I crept into 3rd despite forgetting to pull my aerial up and seeing how far it would get before the failsafe kicked in! I sort of lost count at that point as I was trying to pull the aerial up and being distracted by all the laughter from the competition manager. The range check was very good though!!
Triple Thrash 14/03/20 (Complete 3 touch & go's, 3 loops, 3 rolls and land in the shortest time)
Name Time Position
David C 0-30 1st
Matthew B 0-34 2nd
Gavin B 0-41 3rd
James G 0-42 4th
Richard C 2-13 5th
Neil W DNF 6th
As you can see David was really on form that day, so well done to him, but Matthew was a very close second in this one - great flying Matthew and for beating me and your dad (again!) Last year's champion was definitely having an off day, blaming his equipment, but I suppose that has to be expected when you get to a certain age!
Well done to everyone for taking part and lets hope we can all carry on with the season as soon as possible. The Blindfold flying will also hopefully take place at a later date.
As you have probably seen, lots of shows have been cancelled. If any of you were planning to go to Old Warden, the May one is cancelled but they will review the others as they come up. At the moment the BMFA are still planning for the Nationals on the August Bank Holiday, so again fingers crossed for that.
In other news, you should all have your CAA operator numbers by now. If you haven't, please let us know asap.
We are going to get a Dymo printer, so if you need your numbers printing for your models, we can sort that out when we're allowed out again.
The club WhatsApp group is going well with lots of chat going on. Please post pictures of your building projects or ask questions on that or the facebook group or email me with anything and I can forward it onto you all. Its really important to keep in touch at the moment, so please make use of all our various ways of doing that. If all else fails and you feel like a chat, feel free to call me too if you wish 07966 439835.
Finally I hope you're all enjoying the new series, Warbird Workshop on the Yesterday Channel on Thursday evenings. I think it's a very good series and well worth catching up on if you haven't seen it yet.
That's it for now, but please do keep in touch while we are stuck inside and I can't wait to see all your building projects when we can finally meet again!!
Please take care and hope to see you all safe and well when this is all over.
All the best,
James.