Repairs are coming along :-)

Repairs page has had a couple of updates since the winter league comp.

Should be done soon (ish) 😂😂😆

Rachel has asked that I put some paint on it this time..... We'll see 😊

Welsh Winter League Nov 2018

Finished work at 0730 and headed up through Nantymoel to the Wrecker car park to meet 19 other hardy and hopeful F3Ffers. Greeted by the Clag and armed with a promising forecast we wandered out to the Crest to set up the course and prepare ourselves for what would hopefully be a day to remember.

The fog was clearing as we set up the course (handy for aiming across the valley! ) and after a test flight by Greg Dakin to test the ceiling and landing area, a pilots briefing by our esteemed CD, coordinator and all round good guy Joel West, we were good to go!!! Les Wood had the dubious honour of kicking things off.

Round one was a nervy one for me and after watching lots of flights in the mid 30's I was disappointed to card a 40.32 second flight. I took out a little bit of ballast before the next round as I felt a teeny bit heavy (playing mind games with myself more likely!). I was flying the Pike Precision.

I couldn't believe how quick all the planes were going on the Crest today! The noise as they ripped through the compression was beautiful! Here is a run by Greg Dakin as exhibit A for the noise!




I had been practicing a more flowing style of turn for a while now, it paid off in round 2 as I broke my long standing PB of 36.18 with a 34.06, with a cut on Base B...!!!
I didn't feel like I made the most of the air at all. More to come! 
Graeme Mahoney took the round win with a very rapid 32.14
This isn't that flight, but it IS Graeme 😊

Round 3 was a better flight for me with the same style and less errors to record a lower PB of 32.66! Getting better!

Round 4 was 32.88. Joel was so close to going sub 30, this is one of his flights in the 31 or 32 second bracket.




Round 5 had a massive cut, bunt, recovery that cost me quite a few seconds for a 35.29. Joel set the fastest time of the day with a 29.75 in this round for his 4th round win and 3 in a row to here. Again this is Joel, but not the fastest flight sorry. I missed filming that one.

Round 6 was my best flight of the day with a 30.05!!!! So close to going sub 30! ! and it was a round win for me. I'm not sure which round it was in, but one of the highlights of the day was the extra 90 degrees turn Mark Passingham inexplicably added on his 9th turn! It made for an exciting finish to his run! I did manage to catch that one on film! Sorry (not sorry!) Mark 😁




Round 7 I tried too hard and flew my worst flight (still a 33.xx tho!). I couldn't get the plane to exit my turns the way I wanted it to and I think it was due  to trying too hard to get under 30. We don't get the opportunity that often 😁. Greg Dakin took the honours in the 7th round with his fastest of the day at 31.80

Andy Burgoyne was in the centre for most of my flights and couldn't believe how easy my flights looked! He described them as metronomic 😊, I have to say that is a massive difference to the way most people would have previously described my flights 😂

I made a mistake on my landing after my last flight and now have some repairs to do on the Precision which performed incredibly well!

I have to say a massive thanks to Stefan! We went for a fly together on Friday afternoon and he helped me to come to the settings I ended up with for this comp. It was great to see him make the trip over from Zurich again and fly so aggressively so well!

It's a shame landing takes so long on the Crest, I only got to see 2/3 of the flights and I didn't get anywhere near enough on video. The ones I have are embedded in here and in a playlist on youtube

Now to the results! Joel took a commanding win.
I finished Second!!!!!!! And Stefan Bertschi was 3rd.

There were so many PB's set today! It was fun to watch Dave Rumble get so close so many times, beat it by 0.2 and then finally beat it by a couple of seconds.
It was awesome to see Chris Studley at an f3f comp again, and great to catch up with everyone and meet a few new faces.

I was borrowing Rachel's fantastic little camera for this event and it took me a while to suss it out so I haven't got many photos and the vids are a little grainy. I'll try to get them better for next time.
In the meantime I am sure Mike Shellim has taken some pics and done a report too at rc-soar.com.

here are a few more pics tho 😊

Looking forward to next months one now! Hopefully it'll be as exciting as this one 😎

Futaba FX-32 transmitter

After a bit of frustration with the Taranis and an opportunity to get some extra funds by letting go of a plane, I bit the bullet on purchasing myself a 'new' transmitter and on Sunday I managed to organise picking it up.
I have always trusted Futaba transmitters and the FX-32 came up for sale on the BARCS forum for a reasonable price, so I snapped it up. 

Rachel was working nights early this week, so I had some 'nerd time' on Sunday and Monday night where I was able to change my Needle 124 and Pike Precision over to the Futaba S-FHSS protocol. I chose that as the receivers for that system, the FX-32 does FASST, FASSTest and S-FHSS, were significantly cheaper than the FASSTest and I actually don't care about telemetry in my F3F planes. I do now, however, have telemetry if I ever decide to fly jets or large scale stuff.

The setting up of the planes took me about 4 hours each over the two nights and is relatively simple although somewhat different to the Taranis and the FF9 I had previously. If I just wanted to get them flying, I reckon I could have done them in under an hour. I like to have different conditions (flight modes) and snap flap and differential and other performance-improving stuff, so it takes a little longer.

Today was the first opportunity to test out the new radio so I went up to the Bwlch after finishing work at 1300 hrs to fly on a crossed Icecream slope. I knew the forecast was WNW and figured that I could get some 'marginal conditions' practise and set-ups done.

The conditions were as I expected. Quite crossed from the west (left) with the occasional straightening and also getting worse from time to time as the very weak thermals had their effect.

I was very glad to have the M+M TransMitt cannibalised to fit the FX-32 as it was quite chilly up on the slopes today. It was a beautiful afternoon though and I was very pleased to have had a trouble-free set-up session. Obviously both planes will need more tweaking, but I can go and enter a comp with confidence now.

Speaking of comps. Winter is now upon us! It's time for the winter Leagues to kick in and I am hoping to take part in the Welsh Winter League events. The first one is on Saturday 17th November. I can't wait!!!