I have been proper lazy with the Ol' Blog!!

I've done a few competitions since the last entry on my blog......

First up was the Welsh Winter League finale..

It was a blowy one!

To start with, it was quite a beautiful morning really. Sunny skies, 10 - 13m/sec wind reasonably square on the west face of Mickeys at the Bwlch and 10 of us to enjoy it.

To save our legs we decided to fly two rounds each flight with a 'crow though' to simulate launching our second run. The course was set up pronto and we were up and running after a few maiden flights and setting checks.  One of those maidens was Stefan Bertschi who made the trip from Zurich again to compete with his new Device. I think it's a beautiful plane!

Not sure if it was his maiden flights or not, but Mike Evans competed with his new Pitbull2 and seemed to get along with it very well! 

It’s been a few weeks (Months now!!! Hahahaha) since the comp and I have been very slack about doing this report. So to cut a long story short, I had a pretty horrible comp.

I could not get the distance to the bases correct and did many spectacular cuts and recoveries all adding precious time to my runs. I got more and more frustrated with my inability to fly the complete 100m required of each leg that I pushed harder and harder until in our final round I forced the tail into the grass when I pulled elevator and the tail stopped, tore the fuselage in half and spat the wings, joiner and ballast all over the hillside.

I was really disappointed in myself as there was absolutely no need to be grass cutting.

Graeme told me during the day, also afterwards, that I had one of the best looking turns for the conditions of the day and that it was a shame I kept cutting. I didn’t feel that way at all. I didn’t think I got any decent air and was just pushing for as good a position as I could. I obviously pushed too hard. It seemed as though quite a few others were struggling with the bases as I don’t remember seeing so many cuts in an event before.

The standout for the competition for me was Stefan and his Device. What a combination! Brilliant turns and accurate flying won the day comfortably! Look how short he made the course seem in this fantastic run:

Joel was his usual outstanding self but wasn’t able to catch Stefan so remained second and Graeme Mahoney had a stellar competition taking third place from a very spritely Mike Evans.

I believe Graham Hill and Bruce Hudson set new personal best times and I really enjoyed watching Chris Studley fly his needle124. It may take some time to beat his PB from League event 4, but I thought he was flying better again this time.

Dave Rumble had a very good comp as did Tony Livingstone.

Below are the results from the day.

On a personal note I want to say a massive, ginormous, heartfelt THANKYOU to Tony. He gave me a fuselage for my Precision which has expedited my repair efforts and also gave me a bargain basement deal on a Jedi which you will see me larking about with at the next competition I attend.

That is all for the Winter League 2019! What a winter!

I hoped to hang on to my second place in the league by the end of round 5 but flying like a pleb will not make those hopes come to fruition…

Mike Evans and Graeme Mahoney both overtook me in the League for their well deserved second and third places respectively and Joel West was our Winter League Champion of 2019 with wins in 3 from 4 completed events!!!

Congratulations Joel!!!

Here are the results for the Winter.

It was fantastic getting this many events completed this winter. A MASSIVE thanks to Joel for continuing to organise the Welsh Winter Leagues.

There are some videos of some runs from some of the guys on my Youtube channel including the maiden of Stefan's Device. It's a very beautiful plane!! Here is the playlist from the day:






Next up was the first attempt at BMFA 1 from the Long Mynd in Shropshire. A dash to the slope after a night shift with only the Needle 124 to compete with, as I hadn't finished setting up the Jedi or repairing the Precision, was very nearly an extremely successful trip but the weather was not going to play nicely. We called it a day after completing only three of the required 4 rounds.
A tease of a competition as I was in second place at the conclusion of our day. I was really pleased with myself after that as I had to fly in VERY marginal conditions with 1kg of ballast in the Needle as I had built out the possibility of adding the counterweight for the light joiner ("She'll be right" was WRONG!!).



Up next was the North of England Open.
This was a 3 day event on the European Tour and a World Cup event.
I was delighted to be a part of team Smoggies with John Phillips and Rich Bago.
I managed to have all three planes ready to fly for this event! The Precision was still my number one choice and she faithfully saw me through the entire weekend without falling apart.
I had an astronomically bad start to the 3 day comp! I cut twice in my first run while also having very poor air and my next two runs were very tentatively flown to have me in 28th place after the first day. Light years different to my team mates who were 1st and 3rd after day 1. I was properly embarrassed!!
Day 2 was equally difficult with very light conditions but I managed to fly much better and claw my was from nearly last to 16th after another 6 rounds with a couple of top 5 places. Rich slipped from 1st to 4th place and JP from 3rd to 5th at the completion of the second day.
Days 1 and 2 were split between slopes in the main bowl at the Hole of Horcum. Day three was to be a much blowier affair on the infamous Levisham slope! Model attrition rates are generally quite high on that slope!!
I managed to make it through the day without any damage!!! I was also very glad the temperature had dropped as I was in desperate need of some shade on my arms after neglecting the suncream on days 1 and 2..... twat.

I flew really well on the Sunday. I also had some good air in the last couple of rounds and finished in a very credible 8th place for the competition. Narrowly missing out on catching Rich who placed 7th and JP managed to just miss out on beating Pete Gunning for the Title! Huge congrats to Pete!! Awesome result!
Those 3 places meant that we smashed the team competition and I got my first ever trophy for F3F!!!

Photos courtesy of Rc-soar (Mike Shellim)

Here is a playlist of a few vids from the Saturday. I was too busy launching and flying most of the weekend to get many vids sorry.




My next F3F excursion was the 2nd BMFA league event for this year which was held in Wales this last Sunday. It was a super tricky day with WNW winds meaning we were flying in thermic and crossed wind all day on the Westerly slope of Mickeys at the Bwlch. It was a great call by the Directing team to head straight to the Westerly slope and wait a little for the forecast swing west. All day in crossed conditions on the Icecream slope would have been very uncomfortable.
29 of us managed to complete 8 rounds and Andy Burgoyne took the win with some outstanding flying! I managed to finish 5th which I was very pleased with! The Pike Precision didn't put a foot wrong all day. I had a very enjoyable, yet challenging day.

Speaking of well-behaved, I took my two kids along for their first taste of F3F as spectators and they said (probably just to please Dad...) that they weren't bored and enjoyed themselves!!! Hopefully some of the next generation flyers in the making!

I took some videos from the start of the day, here is a playlist from my youtube channel:





I want to say a massive thanks to Rachel for 'encouraging' me to get this written. Also for her words of wisdom such as "imagine how well you'd have done if you actually practiced..."

Seriously tho, she is an absolute star and I'm very, very lucky!