Radioglide was again affected by the weather, although we did enjoy 3 full days flying out of the four offered by the extended bank holiday. This was slightly frustrating because the normal time for the event, end of May weekend enjoyed beautiful weather. However this year the bank holiday moved back a week so we, along with much of the rest of the Nation, suffered a very wet Sunday, forcing the cancellation of the Multi-launch event. This was unfortunate as it removed an opportunity to see how the electric launched gliders (now with a 150 meter height limiter cut off) performed relative to the winch launched pure gliders.

Saturday started off with low cloud and light drizzle but the rain stopped quickly and the cloud base lifted enough early on to allow a prompt start to the F3K league competition. This  event shared the field with Electric Launched Gliders (ELG) which had to wait for conditions to improve and allowed us to marvel at the launch heights now being achieved by the DLG’ers.

I can’t give a detailed report on F3K as I was on the other side of the field but 11 pilots flew 8 rounds of the various tasks available. One score was dropped for the final placings, with Richard Swindells inevitably taking the win with 6962 points followed by Martin Halston and Simon Jones.

After the delayed start for ELG, good air was to be found and most slots flew out the ten minutes. Indeed almost uniquely for an ELG competition there were no re-launches whatever during the event. The entry was very low for a national status competition however the standard of flying was high – the winner Cliff Hannam returning a perfect score of 6000 closely followed by Peter Allen who might also have achieved a 6000 score if he had not, by mistake, touched his motor control on final approach so turning that flight into a zero score. All “Open Class” ELG entrants flew moulded models, Pike Perfects being much in evidence, used by the many of the competitors, including Cliff Hannam, with Storks, Supras and Pulsars in evidence. The shared field (with F3K) worked without any problems.

ELG Prize winners L -R Robin Sleight (Restricted Class) Peter Allen (Open runner up) Cliff Hannam (Open Winner) Terry Pelling (Open Third)

The F3J competition on Monday enjoyed the best of the Bank Holiday weather and also had the largest entry.  The competition was one of the “National” status events for the BMFA F3J team selection league but the bulk of the entrants were the regular flyers in the BMFA Southern group of F3J events.  With a modest northerly breeze, conditions were good albeit cold for June and virtually all slots flew out.  The competition ran along smoothly and the scheduled five rounds were completed in good time to allow a two slot fly-off of the top five flyers.  Going into the fly-off were Graham Wicks, Colin Paddon, Chris Glover, Peter Allen and Mark Devall.  As always the fly-off produced some outstanding flying and the old master of such events, Colin Paddon beat Graham Wicks by a small margin to once again get his name on the Radioglide premier trophy. Without exception as one would expect, all models were moulded. Neil Jones was campaigning the new Pike Perfection from Samba Models. Samba must employ someone well versed in English language superlatives as they have, with the Pike series, progressed from the Pike to Pike Plus, Pike Superior, Pike Perfect and now the Perfection!  An interesting model with an ultra thin, tall fin and rudder, the latter being unusually large. The latest Xplorers, Tragi Clusters, Supras and Maxas were all on show, with a smattering of older Shadows, Graphites, Starlights  and Experience Pros.

F3J Fly Off  L – R Colin Paddon (Winner) Graham Wicks (Second) ‘Fozzie’ Devall (Fifth) kneeling  Chris Glover (Third) Peter Allen (Fourth	Colin Paddon

The forecast for the 100S event on the Tuesday was also far from promising with rain forecast in the early afternoon and a 12 to 15 mph southerly wind blowing. However, urged on by CD Peter Allen, a very prompt start was made to the flying and a light drizzle had only just started by the time of the final two slots of round five. These final slots were completed without problems but by then it was obvious that serious rain was on the way (the forecast was very accurate!) so the round scores were used to calculate the final positions.  In spite of the overcast sky, many slots were flown out – primarily due to a wave type of lift rather than normal thermal and some of that lift was quite powerful but good penetration was essential to reach the area where the wave lift might exist. As usual with 100S competitions, Trackers were much in evidence but there was also a range of other models, all proving competitive including a couple of Eliminators as well as a Chieftan flown by Garry Binnie and Sagitta by Robin Sleight providing some ‘Classic’ competition.  In the end however both the first two places were eventually taken by Tracker flyers with Radioglide newcomer Mick Thorpe taking first place and narrowly pushing Alan Morton into second spot.  The many outings in the Peterborough series of 100S events obviously does help the scoring of flyers such as Mick and Alan, relative to many of the other competitors who only fly 100S models on an infrequent basis – could be that there is a message most of us could take from that; the more you fly a specific class, the better you will tend to be!

So all in all not a bad weekends flying for the many, made possible by the efforts of a few. Peter Allen once again secured the field for us, along with toilet facilities, took in the entries, laid out flightlines as well as CD’ing 100s. Neville Warby and his magic van were there with equipment for the 100s comp. ‘Uncle’ Sydney Lensenn bought his quiet, polite and efficient tones to running the F3J event, matrixed by Mike Raybone and was very ably assisted by Gill Glover in the tent, scoring. Where would we be without the many ‘better halves’ who help out at competitions. Simon Jones CD’d the F3K event assisted on scoring by Tony Beckett. We hope this marks the return of F3K to the Radioglide calendar. And last but not least Robin Sleight, who ran the ELG event and kept an eye on everything throughout the weekend.

F3J Round Scores

F3J Fly Off Scores