F5J RADIOGLIDE - CD Report.

June 6, 2023

Hi All - please find my report below, apologies it's take a while.

The 27th and 28th May 2023 saw a F5J RADIOGLIDE event of three halves: a beautifully sunny, thermally and calm Saturday, a slightly blustery and less lifty Sunday, and more challenging conditions for the fly-off. Throughout the event a less than desirable Easterly wind blew over the trees, a regular direction during recent years at Buckminster.

We had an excellent entry of 39 pilots on Saturday, slightly fewer on Sunday. The best 9 pilots from the combined two-day event flew against each other during the later afternoon of Sunday.

Again, my thanks to Nick Jackson for his competition set up and results collation and Steve Knowles for his overall organisation skills. These two gentlemen and their entourage (Eddy Small, Richard Harris and Pete Mitchell to name but a few) deserve the thanks of everyone who entered.

There were a few new faces joining us for RADIOGLIDE this year, it was great to see Mike Fantham, David Poole and Simon Conran on the flight line. David Poole did exceptionally well with a 2M RES model – we hope to see them all back next year. Equally it was good to see so many old faces again with Bill Haley having a good Saturday event and Dave Fogg keeping us guessing on his launches.

At the end of Saturday, the top 3 were Steve Haley, Cengiz Philcox, and Peter Allen. Scores were very tight: 200 points from 5000 separating the top 11 pilots.

Sunday’s competition top 3 were: Alex Jeffery in first place, followed by Alan Lipscombe and Peter Allen.

The top 9 pilots from the combined two-day event flew against each other in two 15 minutes fly-off slots in very challenging conditions late on Sunday afternoon. I remember breaking the news to the top 9 about their fly-off selection and seeing more than one of them express complete surprise such was the roller coaster set of combined results.

If I was to select one word to describe the fly-off it would be “brutal”. The air was unforgiving, punishing those who went left instead of right, and those who stayed up wind instead of following lift downwind. The range of scores at the end of the two fly-off slots was huge with many good pilots scraping only a few hundred points from the 2000 on offer. Full credit to the top 3 who were head and shoulders above the rest: Peter Allen (flying a Liberty) delivered a masterclass of good air navigation to take top spot with a perfect 2000 score, with Steve Haley (flying a Prestige) a close second and Alex Jeffery (flying an Explorer) a well-fought third spot. The RADIOGLIDE trophy only has 2 names on it since the class was first introduced 6 years ago - With Peter Allen and Steve Haley reminding us again why that is.

With thanks to everyone who traveled and joined us in another enjoyable event with good, spirited competition and very few broken aeroplanes.

if anyone has more photos to share, please reply and add them to this post - thanks.