The third of the Mike Lucas 100s competitions took place on the 31^st of May 2009 at ferry Meadows in Peterborough; the weather was forecast to be sunny all Day with a light breeze between eight and 12 miles per hour. 20 pilots turned out and we started round one a little later than usual at around 10.35 AM.  Flight times were surprisingly short to start with although a couple of pilots did manage to fly out the slots towards the end of round one.

Round two was better and eight minutes was easier to achieve. Dave Fogg had a catastrophe when his model exploded on launch, his moulded wing simply peeled open and the whole top sheet of the centre section was drifting downwind, the rest of the model headed straight down and buried itself in the usual way. 

Lionel unfortunately damaged his tail plane on landing and this put him out of the competition for the day.

 Round three and the breeze picked up slightly, times were unpredictable and some top pilots were achieving low scores. Graham Gilliatt lost control of his model on launch and after flying sideways across the field ended up cart Wheeling with a loud crash just in front of Richard Yates who had just launched his model, needless to say his launch suffered slightly.

Round four saw reduced flight times with only one pilot achieving over 7 minutes. Kevin Newitt also had trouble with his model when his leading edge and d box split for no apparent reason on launch, this changed the flying characteristics and he landed early.

The carnage was not over yet, I had just finished repairing my moulded model and this was its first day out. The break I had repaired was to the centre section of the wing. I launched as usual on my third flight of the day and half way up the line the tip panel opened up and shook itself to pieces, the rest of the model plummeted to earth with devastating results, the only part that may be used in the future is the centre section and tip panel. The tail plane rudder fuzz and radio gear are all trashed. 

Wing skins pulling apart are now becoming a problem for a few pilots even with taped leading edges!

Round five and pilots were wary of full launches after seeing so many broken models in the earlier slots but thankfully there were no more broken models, although Neville did have a lucky escape when his tow line entangled itself around his tail plane, only his skill and the use of his airbrakes prevented another disaster. Dave Varah also reported a wing flutter in the final round.

  Now for the winners of the day, Dave Varah flew exceptionally well finding low level lift to outfly Richard Yates in round three. Dave was flying his green tracker and finish joint first place with John Hulett.  John started flying again this season after having a tear off due to illness. John has returned with a vengeance  he is flying his own designed and built model and on this occasion managed the full 5000 points, this now puts him in the lead for the series so far.

Third place was Peter Newitt flying his tracker. Peter is a very consistent flyer who always finishes in the top few pilots. Well done you three.

 Thanks to all who helped set up the field and Neville for the use of his equipment as usual.

The next competition will be on 21 June, 2009 at ferry Meadows anyone wishing to enter can do so by contacting Alan Morton on 07986 238172 or email 4mortons at TalkTalk.Net

Full Results

	freq	Rnd 1	Rnd 2	Rnd 3	Rnd 4	Rnd 5	Final Score	% Score	Position
							1	0.0
Dave Varah	64	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	5000	100.0	1
John Hullett (72)	64	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	5000	100.0	1
Peter Newitt	64	952	1000	1000	983	1000	4934	98.7	3
Simon Vaitkevicius	66	777	865	950	1000	1000	4591	91.8	4
Richard Yates (88)	78	619	996	977	986	1000	4578	91.6	5
Kevin Newitt	64	1000	1000	849	1000	466	4315	86.3	6
Alan Morton CD	78	878	994	1000	529	546	3948	79.0	7
Floyd Berryhill	66	696	404	962	764	976	3802	76.0	8
Graham Gilliatt	66	948	548	340	831	902	3568	71.4	9
Bob Rapp	76	736	988	552	823	320	3420	68.4	10
David Leech	78	591	716	570	788	755	3419	68.4	11
Ken Goddard	80	891	581	737	945	0	3154	63.1	12
Neville Warby	80	550	469	884	558	580	3040	60.8	13
Dave Fogg (68)	80	1000	0	942	0	986	2928	58.6	14
Ken Tinkler	76	735	288	946	568	350	2889	57.8	15
Ivan Brown	80	331	896	396	563	377	2562	51.2	16
Chris Edwards	76	466	758	303	394	476	2397	47.9	17
William Watson	66	377	436	0	568	863	2244	44.9	18
Dave Cliffe	76	293	307	604	631	403	2237	44.7	19
Lionel Essam	78	531	0	0	0	0	531	10.6	20