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Saturday 15 June 2013

Post BMFA Nationals

Well a week on from the Nationals and its time to reflect on what happened. Paul and I drove down on the Friday to arrive at a sunny Wrecker about lunch time to get some practise in, wind was bang on the slope and blowing a steady 30mph. I've never experienced lift so strong, it was awesome, Paul flew his Race MX first and was lapping it up, the strong narrow compression zone suiting his flying style. Then we both walked across the road and up to the top of the Back of the Wrecker to see what the landing zone was like, quite turbulent and the model came down quite abruptly, but the soft grass cushioned the fall.

I flew the Xenon next, the conditions suited this model perfectly, being a cross tail it flies on rails with no nasty tendencies, very firmly planted in the sky with great handling. It was really pinging out of the turns, and if I was brave enough I could even spot the front side DS shear layer above the little island of land that juts out from the cliff side to get a satisfying front side DS kick!

Now it was my turn to be guided over the road by Paul to the landing spot, by this time Mark Redsell and Pengy had turned up as well as a few others, the good weather and wind meant the hill would soon be getting busy.

I wanted to fly the Stinger next to see how it compared to the sure footed Xenon, it was a lot livlier and nervous and not as pleasant to fly as the Xenon in the strong lift, even with full ballast which made it feel a bit dull and unresponsive. I now had a problem that the Xenon had flown so well that I was tempted to race that instead on the Saturday. A few more flights with the Stinger eventually convinced me that the Stinger was faster but only just, and I decided to stick to the plan and race that instead.

Because there was a road bike race (Dragon Race) we couldn't get any accommodation in our usual Bridgend haunt so we slummed it in the opposite direction, Merthyr Tydfil. The Castle Hotel was nice enough apart from the heating being on full blast in the middle of summer, our room was on the third floor and all the heat was rising to the top the building, the room felt about 30 deg C! Still no need for any post flight chatter as you passed out pretty quickly as soon as your head hit the pillow, cracking cooked breakfast and 24h bar downstairs so on balance pretty good!

Saturday dawned another sunny day and we rocked up the wrecker about 8:30 a.m. with high expectations, as always, but we all know F3F is a cruel sport and all sorts of stuff can go wrong, so best to stay positive!

My first run was pretty good with a 38.75, then a couple of low 40's and then a 37.80, sounds pretty good until you realise that the fast guys were all doing sub 35's and Joel West who won even did a sub 30, basically a sub 35 was the new sub 40! Still I stuck to my guns and flew pretty good for me and ended up in 9th place after the first day. Still lots of room for improvement as my turns were too tight, I was missing the sweet spot of the narrow compression band, especially on the pump outs, and I kept cutting, well nearly cutting, but when you have to make a correction in a turn, it throws you off line for the next turn.

The landings were hard work as there could be up to 5 planes stacking up in the landing circuit as people walked over the road. I was flying pretty heavy ballasted, but fortunately there was tonnes of lift every where. I preferred to speck it out to get out of other peoples way, but it was still pretty stressful. I had a couple of dodgy landings, the worse one saw her heading out low towards the car park and hitting a load of sink, I managed to get around with enough height to grease her in at my feet, probably the best landing I've ever done!

The Wrecker did wreck quite a few models about 6 or 7, some got damaged on launch as the rotor grabbed them and slammed them into the ground. Others got damaged on landing, some got sucked into the pockets of sink close to the slope edge. Some flicked out of sight to the bottom of the cliff or stalled and went in, quite a frightening place to fly really, but that's part of the Wrecker experience.

Sunday was another day of glorious sunshine, but less wind and less lift, this made flying harder to get a quick time and you really needed some luck with the thermals. I flew better than the Saturday with less mistakes and better pump outs, but unfortunately this didn't equate with any progress up the rankings and I fell back to 11th place. With only three rounds flown the wind then changed direction and that was the end of the comp. Pity really as I could have done with some extra rounds to get back into the top ten, but that's racing for you.

Fantastic weekend of racing, best I've ever experienced and well run by the organisers, Martin, AJ, Simon, JP and everyone else involved.

1
Joel West
9565.03
1000
2
Martin Newnham
9258.3
967.93
3
Mark Redsell
9082.52
949.55
4
Mark Abbotts
8965.73
937.34
5
Paul Upton
8948.36
935.52
6
Mike Evans
8828.1
922.95
7
Greg Dakin
8814.82
921.56
8
Rich Bago
8686.53
908.15
9
John Phillips
8648.37
904.16
10
Jonathan Wells
8567.77
895.73
11
Tom Foreman
8540.41
892.87
12
Mike Shellim
8509.74
889.67
13
Frank Hulton
8470.78
885.59
14
Mark Treble
8329.9
870.87
15
Paul Garnet
8292.64
866.97
16
Keith Wood
8287.31
866.41
17
Simon Thornton
8190.99
856.34
18
Scott Ravenscroft
8090.49
845.84
19
Andy Burgoyne
8047.21
841.31
20
Ronnie Lampe
8025.52
839.04
21
Graeme Mahoney
8023.17
838.8
22
Jon Edison
7770.78
812.41
23
Tony Livingston
7625.39
797.21
24
Mick Walsh
7574.89
791.93
25
Martin Drewett
7557.62
790.13
26
Ian Web
7036.83
735.68
27
Tony Robertson
6984.54
730.21
28
John Treble
6976.09
729.33
29
Pete Burgess
6899.84
721.36
30
John Bennett
6118.42
639.66
31
Ron Boughton
4613.79
482.36
32
Ian Falconer
1947.98
203.65



2013 BMFA F3F Nationals Wales from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

RCRCM Dorado

Got hours of footage of the Nationals to wade through, but while your waiting here is a dirty little edit of Greg Dakin flying his RCRCM Dorado after the comp was finished, lovely smooth flying!


Dorado from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.


Monday 10 June 2013

BMFA 2013 F3F Nationals - Wales

Wow what a fantastic weekend of blue skies, wind, awesome lift and friendly company. Will write more later, but here are some photos of the weekend to wet your appetite...