6 P's

Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Rachel and I intended to walk up Pen Y Fan yesterday from the Lower Neuadd Reservoir near Pontsiscill.
Dogs packed, Precision packed, boots, coats, hats etc, all packed for our 'no more than 4 hour' walk.
We headed off armed with a picture card/map with some quite detailed directions.
The only vague direction was how to get to the start point. 'Follow the small lane north from Pontsiscill to the car park near the reservoir'.
Anyway, the map suggested using an OS map, gave the reference for the suggested map, and I ignored it.

We parked up at the reservoir, donned our walking boots, popped our packs on and headed off, following the very clear directions up the bank on our left to the escarpment.... (1330 hrs)

The first 4 or 5 km's of our supposedly 11km round trip were spent discovering that we were never going to find the magical escarpment and we headed for Corn Du and Pen Y Fan in the distance.
We found some lovely places about. We even thought we might have found where we should have started our walk from...

It was challenging terrain, long grass over wet, boggy marshland type stuff. The Yorky (Fred) needed carrying through some of the worst parts.

At about 9 Km's into the walk, the map came into chrystal-clear view and it's accuracy was shown to be precise! We could see the start point below us as we stood on top of the magical Escarpment.
I was so chuffed that I had to have a quick flight in the very light conditions, but awesomely beautiful scenery.

Now the actual walk could start properly (1600 hrs).
One of the first top spots we got to would be incredible for DS! NE or SW winds, just for fun though. SW will nearly always bring hill fog. NE is chilly!!

Next peak was Corn Du. Those steps up the face were hard yesterday! The boys were chuffed for a break.

Got to the top of Pen Y Fan at 1800hrs. It's such a beautiful place to be, in most conditions, and yesterday was no different. I'd forgotten about the Upper Neuadd Reservoir ever having water in it. It has beed drained to protect the Grade 2 listed Dam Wall and probably wont be filled again. We could still see it and where it should be. It would be a lovely walk from there.

Downhill time and a race to the well marked roady-path before we couldn't see any more.

Discretion won over valour as we decided to leave Cribyn for next time. It is STEEEEEEP! and it was already pretty dark as we reached our decision point for ascent or not (1825).

Luckily, Rachel and I are pretty fit (on a global scale.....) and what we lack in fitness, we make up for in stubbornness and pig-headed determination.

We dragged our sorry limbs for the next three hours passed the suggested start point. Passed the suggested car park. Passed a massive reservoir and along another reservoir through a pine forest and finally back to the car (21xx hrs, I forgot to look). Fortunately it was all on an actual road once we got down to the Lower Neuadd Reservoir.

I printed out a series of OS maps to figure out our route. I still can't quite figure the part in the bottom left, reckon it was further. Next time I'll print the maps before doing the walk. What a Pillock!
A crude measurement of our route comes in at 23km's. No wonder I'm a bit tender today! Hopefully you can see our route in pen on the maps. 

We love an adventure!!!

Lucky boy with the Needle yesterday!

I did some more setting up yesterday on the cliffs near the farmhouse in Southerndown in pretty good lift although slightly crossed.
Got the Precision going well, although the ballast is in front of the CG so the heavier it gets, the more it pulls up. The main tube is pretty close to the CG, so I might just get some tungsten and forget the joiner ballast.
There has to be something else causing it....
The Needle 124 was going great! Then control got sluggish and and the brakes were only 1/2 deploying..... dying battery!!!!
Quick emergency landing done safely.

Today I made up a 2 cell LiIon battery and popped it in the nose with a 5V BEC and balanced her up. Good to go again!

More setting up and figuring out to do.

I'll be looking for another transmitter soon. The FF9 is a bit too long in the tooth. I'm thinking and FX30 or the handheld version.
I'm open to suggestions and reasonably priced offers 😆😇

Mickey's Westerly after work ;-)

After my disaster at the Welsh Open this year I had to get some time on the sticks with the ol' trusty FF9. Setting up the planes will take longer as each adjustment requires landing 😱.

Actually my landings are pretty good now 😂.

I had a quick flight on the Wrecker the other day with Andrzej (awesome to catch up with him!!) and after measuring the CG after managing to just get the needle down safely, it was found to be at 117mm 🙈..... I fly pretty rearward at 100 on the needle normally... 
so she was a little sketchy.

Anyhoo, I managed to sneak up to the Westerly slope of Mickeys on Wednesday after an early finish at work for some much needed stick time and set up time on the Pike Precision and Needle 124. The Westerly of Mickey's is ideal as the landing area is the nicest we have and it was worth the extra walk past a flyable Mickey's (Sorry Graham Wookman). 

CG on the Noodle was set at 100 and the only thing to get right now is the settings and travels. That'll take a little while I think.

The Precision gave me a few headaches tho. I thought I had set the CG at 107 and couldn't for the life of me figure out why I needed to add so much down elevator for straight and level flight. It turns out that I had set it at 97... 
I'm not sure that moving it back to 107 will have the desired effect on her flight characteristics, but we will see next time I take her out.

After getting both of them set to a level where I am confident that they won't just fall out the air, I am less fussy about where I fly next 😊

It was lovely to meet Graham (Sorry if it is spelt Graeme 😇) and share the walk, sky and a chat with him. He was flying a McMeekan Falcon and a Pike F3J plane (Superior?).
I didn't take any vids and only managed a couple of photos.
We had some Welsh Clag to play with too.... for a change.

WELSH OPEN 2018

From what I have read, seen and watched, it was an incredible Welsh Open this year. I had every intention of competing this year and was determined to NOT let down the teammates (Kev and Mark) as I did for the North of England Open earlier this year.
I arrived on Friday morning with Mia and Adam all fired up ready to hang out on the slope with me and my flying mates and watch me compete. The Taranis had other ideas though and would not let me send any signals to either of my gliders.
Long story short, I had managed to burn out the internal module and had also fried both my receivers in the process of trying to get it all working.
The Taranis is now in the bin.
I am back using the old trusty Futaba FF9.
It took me a few night to get the planes programmed and I didn't want to ignore the kids while I had them staying with me so I was not able to get back out to the Slopes to even watch the rest of the Welsh Open.
Huge congratulations to Joel West, Mark Treble and John Philips for the top three spots!

Champ of Champs, Take one, April 2018

Meteorology.

It seemed as accurate as Astrology last week with no-one having a single clue what the weather was actually doing, let alone what it was going to do in advance!

We had 2 days of below legal wind. You could't predict that for Wales in April, ever.

Day one saw us complete 3/4 of a round and I had my first competitive run in well over 2 years. A false start to begin with as I didn't get buzzed off-course and then on the re-flight I managed to hit the bases pretty flush to record the second fastest time of the people that flew, only being beaten by Joel. I was well pleased with that and also very pleased with how the Pike Precision performed in the very marginal conditions.

Mark Passingham was the lucky one to get to fly as the wind stopped so he had the most exciting flight of the day as his Freestyler tried t o get a closer look at the roadworks below. He managed to coax it back to the landing area safely.

Day two had a promising forecast giving us NE from 5 to 10 MPH for the majority of the day. Those wind speeds never materialised and we had a lovely day sitting around chatting and sports flying (very sedentary SPORTS.... ) in the very light wind which was becoming increasingly thermic with the associated good and BAAAAD lift. 

Greg Dakin treated us to his maiden flight of the Redshift. 
It seemed to go quite well, especially once the ailerons were plugged in... Andy Burgoyne took a couple of FacebookLive videos which I'm sure you'll be able to find on Facebook. 

Here are a few photos from the day, including the maiden.

It is a real shame that the Welsh weather is trying to beat us every time we want to compete. We'll get a real comp in soon enough.

I really enjoyed catching up with all the blokes who came along and it was great to meet a few new faces too!

A bit of Sloping today, left me with a big cheesy grin.

Had a half-day today and the forecast said WNW....
It had said NW for the last couple of days and the actual wind had been smack on West so I took a gamble (I needed the walk) and yomped from the IceCream carpark to the Westerly slope of Mickeys at the Bwlch. It's such a nice walk 😎.

It wasn't directly on the slope, but it was great to get some cross-wind practice for a bit and when the thermals came square through...... so much speed!

I had a play with CG's today. I discovered that the Needle is 'flyable' with a very rearward CG (107 ish) , however it is VERY uncomfortable. Whisper quiet but sooo twitchy with very savage reactions to changes in the air, which tend to happen nearer the ground...

I popped a little more lead in the nose of the Precision after a very squirrelly flight which made her fly like a pussycat. probably shifted the CG to 104-ish. I'll measure them both when I've got them where I like them.

It is so nice to be flying two very fast planes 😋

The wind did square to the slope just before I was leaving, but it chilled substantially and I had to feed the fur-babies. They were rocking.

Weather, repairs and Big F3F events

We've had some interesting weather lately and after thawing out since Sunday, today I've managed to get the needle structurally repaired again. The resin is currently going off and I'll crack it open in 24 hours or so.

Hopefully this time I'll leave enough material on the fuz and it won't snap again. Landing sideways was never going to help though....

I'm also going to have to have a think about relief of the wing skins and wipers. Probably tape will solve that one.

I have a free weekend and there are two winter league competitions in the UK this weekend. The Midlands one is on Saturday and I'd like to apologise to the regular blokes as I have entered and the weather doesn't look good. The Southern one is on Sunday and the weather looks pretty poor for that one too. I'm yet to enter that one, but I'd love to.

I've also entered the North of England Open in June and the Welsh Open in September. I imagine those two will be my only big events for the year.

I've been looking at foamies lately as I need a couple for teaching the kids to fly. Adam is keen. Mia probably won't, but that is OK! Just a couple of delta wings like the good old Zagi or X-it will do nicely. It might be a bit of a pipe-dream, but I'd love to be able to spend time with the kids on the slopes. Especially now that they are able to deal with the cold better.

I also pulled out the Wasabi to have a look as I had some spare resin in a pot going to waste. I had completely forgotten that I had started the repairs on her. She'll be galavanting about on the slopes soon! She will always look like a battered bird, but she knows I still care ;-)