After much deliberation and consultation by
our trusty League co-ordinator, the excellent decision was made to shift the 2nd
round of the 2015 BMFA Summer League from an unflyable Whitesheet to the Bwlch
in Wales. The forecast looked very promising with clear skies and a decent blow
on the VR slope.
We were greeted at the Bwlch by drizzle and
a very week breeze. Where did that come from?!?
Fortunately the drizzle didn’t stick around
for long and 20 pilots got the competition underway in what we hoped were 'building' conditions. The first round was a bit pedestrian with only a handful
of pilots carding times under 50 seconds with Mark Redsell making the best of
the tricky conditions to take the round with a time of 48.28. The ground in the
valley hadn’t warmed up yet, so a spread of 11 seconds across the 20 pilots was
as close as the gap from first to last got. The thermic influence was yet to
come!
When it came, it came with a BANG!! I’m not
sure if I have seen such variability in a comp before. In most rounds, the gap
from first to last was around 20 seconds but the biggest gap was 53 seconds.
Round 2 saw Simon Thornton take the honours
from Graeme Mahoney with 41.05 and the ground was starting to warm up a little,
giving us little ‘love puffs’ to play with and tease us with regards to
ballast. I chose to leave mine in all day, except for one round, which was
empty. The thing about CD-ing is, you just don’t get any time to adjust
anything! I can’t remember which round it was, but I popped a flap servo out
and Simon Thornton took my place in the centre to enable me to glue it back in
and a massive thanks to him for that.
Mark Redsell took round 3 from a hard
charging Ronnie Lampe. Both their Freestylers were looking fabulous all day.
The Thermals still hadn’t really materialised and we were yet to see a sub 40
run with 41.39 taking the round.
The 4th round saw the first
evidence of a proper thermal with Mark Redsell scoring a 36.74 to take the
round from Simon, Graeme, Mark T and Martin Newnham. Martin had a bit of a day
to forget really. He was in obvious discomfort with a sore back, didn’t get
much luck with the thermal lottery and was stuck in the centre too! His
Freestyler looked great though!
Round 5 saw Martin Drewett and his Pitbull take
the win with a brilliant 36.41 run beating Neal Shead and his PB of 38.07. Andy
Burgoyne had a fantastic run with his Drops 277 to take 3rd in that
round. I think it was this round that I had a booming thermal and managed to
cut about half way through the run and perform the world’s worst recovery to
kill all the speed and ruin a potential PB by at least 10 seconds.
Round 6 started with Martin Drewett getting
another blistering time and setting a 36.17 as the early benchmark. Tony
Livingstone fell just short with a 37.42 then up stepped the irrepressible,
undeterrable John Treble. I was walking back to the pits after another mid 40
run to see Johns Pitbull being sucked straight out of Mark’s hand into the
stratosphere in the mother of all thermals. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the
spec with fingers crossed in nervous anticipation as John slammed the Pitbull
through its paces and scraped the bases for a beautifully flown 31.67 seconds
of screaming ecstasy!! The cheer that erupted for John after that flight was immense
and I won’t forget it for ages. That was the flight of the day for me. It must
have ignited the afterburners under Mark Treble too.
No Son likes being beaten by their Dad. It’s
a man thing. Mark bounced into the centre of the course as a juicy thermal
arrived with fire in his eyes and set off in pursuit of a time better than 31.67.
He came so close and squeezed what he could out of his Toxic and the thermal to
card a personal best 33.31 and win the 7th round from Martin Newnham
and Tony. Martin almost smiled after that flight! Graeme Mahoney had been
having a stellar day at the races until this round. He had to use some
antigravity magic to keep his Jedi Space Lift aloft for the 87 seconds it took
to complete the 1km course.
Mark Treble tried again in the 8th
round. He took the round win from Tony and Ronnie but 34.08 wasn’t fast enough
for him. Tony and Ronnie were rocketing up the leader board with some excellent
flights! Andy Burgoyne copped the brunt of the dead air before a thermal in
this round.
The 9th round was to be our
final round. The winning time was 40.18 by Simon followed closely by Martin
Drewett and Mark Redsell. The air had died for the start of the 10th
round and it was pretty uncomfortable watching Stuart Wallace fighting to stave
off a dreaded land out and the unanimous decision to call it a day was made. I had
no idea who had won overall as so many different pilots had good flights and
bad flights.
It was awesome to see Vic Eldridge at an
F3F comp. I hadn't seen Vic for ages and was chuffed to see him throwing his
Elita about the place! It was also a shame to see him park it early on in the
comp and sit the rest of the day out. A special mention goes to Neal Shead for
popping his ‘Bwlch F3F’ cherry. He flew his Strega very well and went sub 40
for the first time with a new PB of 38.07! I’m sure he won’t forget this event
for some time! Ian Falconer managed to caress his Jedi around the course in 42.94
in his second F3F outing to the Bwlch. Mark and John Trebles PB’s were a
highlight for me and it was great to see a bit of family rivalry on display.
The determination on Mark’s behalf to beat Dad was visible, and he came close
too!
Massive thanks to Martin Newnham for
organising and running the competition through the pain of a back in spasm.
Thanks to John Treble for organising the buzzers, all pilots for buzzing when
asked and a huge thanks to all the guys who tirelessly launched all day.
Congratulations to Simon Thornton on winning
our first completed Summer League competition for 2015!! He flew his Shinto
brilliantly all day and made the most of the air he was given.
Mark Treble got close at the end of the day
but had to settle for a fantastic 2nd place in front of the
superhuman Mark Redsell who managed to finish the day in a valiant 3rd
place.
Looking forward to our next F3F event which
will also be held in Wales in the middle of May. The BMFA F3F Nationals. Entries are open now, so get them in!
The final results from the second round of
the BMFA F3F Summer league are below. The spreadsheet is available on the GBSRA
website. Hopefully someone, somewhere, took some pictures or video as I didn't get a chance to.
1
|
S Thornton
|
7306.67
|
100.00
|
|||
2
|
M Treble
|
7235.62
|
99.03
|
|||
3
|
M Redsell
|
7189.10
|
98.39
|
|||
4
|
M Drewett
|
7053.32
|
96.53
|
|||
5
|
T Livingstone
|
7027.14
|
96.17
|
|||
6
|
R Lampe
|
6988.82
|
95.65
|
|||
7
|
G Mahoney
|
6896.48
|
94.39
|
|||
8
|
M Newnham
|
6806.06
|
93.15
|
|||
9
|
C Landells
|
6760.54
|
92.53
|
|||
10
|
S Wallace
|
6708.23
|
91.81
|
|||
11
|
M Abbotts
|
6676.37
|
91.37
|
|||
12
|
J Treble
|
6567.96
|
89.89
|
|||
13
|
A Burgoyne
|
6522.47
|
89.27
|
|||
14
|
I Falconer
|
6500.43
|
88.97
|
|||
15
|
N Shead
|
6491.73
|
88.85
|
|||
16
|
M Evans
|
6430.86
|
88.01
|
|||
17
|
F Hulton
|
6176.64
|
84.53
|
|||
18
|
M Shellim
|
6156.98
|
84.27
|
|||
19
|
P Burgess
|
5961.56
|
81.59
|
|||
20
|
V Eldridge
|
2305.59
|
31.55
|
Mike Shellim took some fantastic photos and has let me show you some here! Thanks Mike!
Check out Mike's other photos in his Zenfolio albums here
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