This was the first event to be flown to the new 200Watt rules that were drawn up for this year, as an event to replace the now defunct BMFA rules that now specify Height Limiters.
They are accepted for BARCS Electric League & will be used at this years, Radio Glide.

The weather co operated, to a degree not seen for some months with warm sunshine, after a slightly cloudy start, with the wind no where near where it was forecast to be, from the South but from the East for most of the day, and very light approx 4-6 mph.
Initial entry was 15, but this was reduced to 12 actually flying on the day, due to illness on the day, and Peter Hindle who decided not to fly so as he could concentrate on the scoring & starting the slots. I am extremely indebted to Peter, as I do not know how I managed now to fly and do the scoring in the past!!!. To that end I should say that Peter has spent a great deal of time developing a computer scoring system that is very user friendly, which we used for the first time on Sunday which worked flawlessly, throughout the day. Based on Visual Basic even I can use it. The downside to this was that his not so portable laptop needed a generator to power during the day as it needs 7 amps to run it!
Processing was got through fairly quickly as most people had their labels from last year with weight/power details, and those that did not or who had changed them were checked out by testing.
This will stay with them, with the onus on the flyer to ensure they stay correct if changes are made, as models will be randomly checked as in the rules.

Flying got under way at 10.35am, and it was decided to use a 30 second motor run for the first Round, to access lift conditions, but with the wind from the East the wave lift was there to be used.
It was decided that the motor run time be reduced down to 22 seconds from then on.
I based this on that the average climb rate on a 200watt model is approx 30 ft per second, so this would equate to 200 metre height, to give a comparison to the other class.
As it turned out, this worked out OK and could have even been cut further to say 15 seconds, as the lift during the day was very consistent, with only Slot 2 of Rd 5 where the highest score was 5minutes plus. In all the other slots at least one flyer clocked over 9 minutes flight time.
The wave lift that appears from this direction does disappear, to catch you out sometimes, but this was replaced with good thermal activity as the day warmed up. Many flyers, including yours truly who looked to be down at one stage managed to work light thermals up to a good height to get away.
Progress was a bit slow at times due to a few problems like models in trees & malfunctions of various guises that held slots up, but we managed to fly 6 rounds, by 4.30 pm, where by most people said call it a day as the wind was quite chilly by then.

The top 5 places are as follows

Alan Twine               4981     Alacrity/Graphite hybrid
Keith Fisher              4965     Pulsar 3.2
Paul Wainwright       4957    Own Design
Peter Sainsbury         4907    Pulsar 3.2
Brian Austin              4829    Alacrity Plus/Watts Up

All the contestants said they enjoyed the day and look forward to the next event on the 3rd May,
Where we will have some competition from abroad with 2 flyer’s from Portugal flying over to take part!
Bearing in mind that we were flying 10 minute slot for all, and you could not start the motor til the slot started, the highest score was by Paul Wainwright of 9 58 plus 50 landing points, Keith Fisher managed a 9 59 but no landing points. Very few people over flew to incur the extra penalty of 2 points per second.

Brian