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This discussion is becoming belligerent, personalised and unproductive. And the subject matter is too important for this. Please: Read the forum guidelines: https://www.barcs.co.uk/guidelines/ Let's just knock the discussion on the head for this evening. Late-evening posts are rarely a good idea. In future, all posts should be respectful. We don't have to like each other and we may disagree about strategy and tactics but please accept that we all want the best for model flying. If you have information, share it rather than claim lack of engagement from others. A complaint has already been received from a forum member about one of the posts in this discussion and understandably so. With my forum admin hat on, I really don't want to start warning people or pulling posts. Help me not to.

A bit of rain this morning, but it eventually (almost) stopped and we set up camp on the wrecker. We managed to complete 5 rounds with wind speeds around 8-9m/s. Results so far: 1 John Phillips 3960.04 2 Mark Redsell 3938.44 3 Joel West 3875.65 4 Peter Gunning 3710.88 5 Alvaro Silgado 3700.22 6 Stefan Bertschi 3687.57 7 Fernando Moro 3684.95 8 Arjen Van Vark 3643.33 9 Graeme Mahoney 3640.49 10 Mark Passingham 3632.46 11 Mark Treble 3593.76 12 Aleix Ingles Elias 3568.17 13 Espen Torp 3564.28 14 Andy Burgoyne 3563.02 15 Kevin Newton 3558.53 16 William Fourie 3548.02 17 David Rumble 3530.07 18 Paul Stubley 3480.96 19 Les Wood 3473.2 20 Mike Shellim 3414.36 21 Jason Bioletti 3381.32 22 Ian Mason 3362.54 23 Dave Demott 3331.31 24 Graham Hill 3238.24 25 Bruce Hudson 3231.44 26 ALLEN ELLIOTT 3167.05 Fastest time: 36.73 by Joel West in round 2

Medina | F5 RES | 3rd September 2023 | 2hr 13 minutes 1 second (new personal record). Good flying weather on a weekend! First time in too long. Very light wind and HOT! Quite a few kites out today. Lift was tricky low down, first hour was very straight forward as stayed up high. Flew in and out of lift and used the spoiler to keep around 300 meters. Hazy patches but not the best visibility. The second hour was much tougher, had to work really hard from 60 mins to 90 mins to get back to 400 meters. Big patches of sink and slow climbs. At 2 hours my transmitter congratulated me and the 2:30 looked doable, but the lift was taking me into the sun and my arms were getting heavy holding the TX high - switching away from the sun I hit sink. Had a strong read and headed in that direction but never found the lift - just more sink. Needed a lie down after that one.

Hi All, and greetings from Dupnitsa in Bulgaria where we will be staying for this week. The flying field here sits in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, beautifully picturesque, and at this time of the year usually very hot. First of all, a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who took part on the raffle organised by Neil Jones. The cost of getting our team (myself, Steve and Simon Haley, and Rick Lloyd as Team Manager) out here is significant and your contributions (along with those from the BARCS and the BMFA) will go a long way to help cover the major costs of our trip. We also appreciate all the support from everyone over the social media channels - your well wishing is much appreciated. Also appreciated is the on-field help from Graham Wicks and Steve Knowles. I will try to provide a regular update to our progress, for those of you on Facebook, the F5J UK site will get regular updates also. We arrived last Thursday night and went straight into the IKAR cup which is a 2 day F5J competition before the World Championships, and gave us a chance to re-familiarise ourselves with the field and the "micro-climate" weather. There was around 125 entries, many of the people who planned to fly the WCs were there - many of the "great" soaring names I'd heard about all present and correct. Conditions were good generally, and challenging from time to time, with light and variable thermal lift and massive sink. Launch heights varied from 10 metres to 250 metres - at our best we made quite a few around the 40 metre mark which still feels a little bit alien for us - it's tough flying 9 minutes 58 seconds and a 50 point landing bonus with a 40m launch height and getting "only" a 970. We flew our regular "mode", looking for thermal feeds and circling birds, but it didn't work well for us. Lift was in many places across the field in small bubbles and most pilots flew in a pack using other models as the major lift indicator. We learned quite a bit on how not to fly on this field. Overall results from our side were a bit below par and we were a bit disappointed, but we persevered. The fly-off of the IKAR cup was an amazing spectacle to watch with most pilots flying at 5 metres high across the field looking for lift before launching finally to around 25 metres, flying 14 mins and 59 seconds and getting 50 landing points. 14 pilots flew the fly-off and their qualifying scores before fly-off were separated by around 100 points over the 14 pilots - so very close. The WCs started today with around 85 entries for seniors and 30 for juniors. The weather was hot and the wind variable. Wind strength went from flat calm at 8am to gusting 30+ mph just after mid-day. Due to the wind speeds, thermal activity was scarce and very fast moving - very few people went down wind of the launch point. Strangely the sinky air seemed to stay around for longer. Flying 4 minutes from a 200m launch was the norm. Many of the competition continued to fly lightweight models - launching to 200m + upwind and slowly drifting back to the landing spot, which seemed a good strategy. There is just about every make and model of commercial available F5J model flying here, also one "home brew" that I counted flown by a pilot from the US. The previous IKAR cup had a Plus X, a Prestige and an Eternity in the top 3. There were many pilots flying Explorer Q4s also. We flew 3 rounds of the seniors today (and later watched 3 rounds of the juniors). During the last round, Simon, Steve and I were flying our Prestiges full ballasted at around 2.7kg and were still not heavy enough. Our motors and flight batteries worked overtime to haul such heavy airframes up to 200m launch height and 400m upwind. So far Simon Haley has the best result from team GBR at 14th with both Steve and I nursing a poor round, We have 14 rounds in total to fly before the weekend so many things could change. We will do our best for all of you supporting us.

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.

Hi all, Neil Pritchett here. As some of you know, I started flying RES earlier this year coming from F3K where my ageing bones were suffering! Entered 4 national RES comps and managed quite well with my own design which evolved during the year. I fully agree with the ethos of making RES a good, modest cost, enjoyable class; but went my own way on design as I considered the kit prices to be creeping up too much and most designs were more suited to weather conditions on the continent. Hence the birth of RES Raven, which is the settled design that I have used in the last 3 national comps, and several ISA & an Aylesbury contests, again with decent results. Some of you have asked me to provide a kit of cut parts which I’m going to produce in the next month or so. I don’t intend to become a kit manufacturer as I’m retired from running my own business and don’t need the stress! However, this small batch is okay. In an attempt to encourage more pilots to design/build their own, I’m going to do a build log of my RES Raven design here if that’s allowed. I’ll await ‘the powers that be’ to confirm if it’s allowed, and if so will start posting my design philosophy & build process. Happy flying.

F3F Dates for 2024 Mar 23-24 — CoC HoH Apr 7 — L1 Wales Apr 20-21 — Nationals Wales Apr 26-27 — Nationals (Reserve) May 19 — L2 Whitesheet Jun 9 — League (Reserve) Jun 28-30 — North of England Open July 21 — L3 Scotland Aug 4 — L4 Long Mynd Aug 17-18 — English Open Sep 13-15 — Welsh Open Sep 29 — L5 HoH Oct 20 — League (Reserve)

Some more Saker trophy’s for this year, can only say again I’ve been very impressed with this set up of Saker and KingMax servos. This is a great combination for UK F3F competitions, plus a very nice sports plane with easy handling. Welsh open trophies (I just used the Saker in this event) Euro F3F League trophy the Saker helped with this win, plus also helped in the UK F3F league win. looking forward to next years F3F leagues JP

Well everyone knows about it now. But what a fantastic victory for JP and the Saker at the English Open. Very well done JP. And by such a huge margin. Dominant. Any competition pilot knows its down to the pilot of course, but the model has to 1) Have good handling 2) Be well behaved and easy to fly at best efficiency 3) Reliable 4) Capable of performing at the very top level to allow the pilot to concentrate on their flying and not be fighting the model or trying to make up its performance deficits. JP, Saker and Kingmax servos performed at that very top level and delivered the result. A result that many more expensive airframes and servos failed to deliver. JP's complete airframe package brand new is circa £1250. Compare that to the cost of all the airframes and exotically priced servos that weren't so capable that weekend as JP and his kingmax servo guided Saker. Yes its JP, but the hardware also has to be spot on to allow him to do it. Kingmax servos have also won an F5J Eurotour at Interglide 2021 in my own Infinity model. A model several years old leading up to the event and with a lot of use especially during lock down where I had 100's of hours on it and it's as crisp and precise as the day it was new. John (and me in the Infinity) use Kingmax CLS2035HHV in the fuselage a 5.5KG / 0.05s servo. In the wings CLS0911W on flaps a 10kg / 0.11s servo and CLS0612W on ailerons a 7.5kg / 0.10s servo. And of course a major nod to Ian Mason the designer of the Saker. Without him none of this would have happened and what a perfect finale it is to what he has achieved. Ian has always championed his own fantastic designs and the Willow, Harrier, Falcon etc and now the Saker are all extremely good models. A word from Ian the designer.. "From agreeing the final CAD design with Mike Francis to seeing the first prototype it's a long process, Seeing the Saker performing so well in the hands of JP this summer has been one of the best feelings I've had on the slopes. Knowing the Saker has delivered on my objective of producing a competitive model that is available to a wider range of modellers is fantastic" From JP the pilot.. "I had a very good couple of days, I must say the Saker is easy to fly F3f with" "the combination of Saker and Kingmax servos is working well for me, these Kingmax servos are really impressive lighting quick and very accurate. Have to say again I’ve have been very impressed with these servos, great quality and great price. Big thanks to Flightech" 1 Saker in stock and more on order.

A bit of a shame about the weather, but we did at least manage to get a result which was an achievement in itself! Well done to JP, Mark and Joel, and thanks to Kev, Andrzej, helpers and visitors. Here's a brief report, and a link some photos: https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/wo/index.php

One very worried looking Pitbull! Now fixed and ready for its next sortie

If you're interested to read, I had an article published in RCME this month. It's in 3 parts - the final one (yet to be written) being a write up from the WCs this August. I hope is that it does something to promote our sport and also BARCS. Picture of the first page attached - you need to buy RCME for the other pages and next article.

Medina | F5 RES | 9th August 2023 | 1hr 57 minutes 6 seconds Took the day off to make the most of the weather and get a decent flying session in. Headed to second club field which I've not been to for 6 months. Plenty of other members had the same idea. Got away nicely with first launch on the Medina around 11.15am. Apart from a Chinook doing laps of the field, the first 50 minutes were quite straight forward, periods of strong breeze, calm, sun and cloud. I was experimenting with losing height on the flaps and nearly blew the hour as lost too much height, had a decent save and got away again for the hour mark. Next 30 minutes were challenging as the lift went narrow and wind picked up, had to work hard following lift down wind, pushing back up wind and repeating. At the 90 minute mark, I had a spectacular save under 10 meters right in front of me. Wind indicator swung 180 degrees and I managed to center in the lift to get away again. Wind now started to drop and smooth lift. Concentration was waning and on my last climb out from 100 meters I was sharing the lift with an F5J model, I was spending more time avoiding a midair than staying in the lift. I ended up losing the good lift and coming down. Landed with 11.4 volts left in the 3s 550maH battery (around 35% left), so I didn't have too much left in the tank but should probably have made at least 2h20. Forecast was for it to cloud over but it actually stayed really nice for rest of the day, wind dropped to almost nothing. Lift was near perfect but my neck wasn't up for another long flight. Flew bungee Medina and DLG for rest of the day. It's worth noting that my Altis Nano trace reckons the flight was 1hr 53. I've tested my Taranis timer against a stop watch and its perfect, so I'm not convinced the nano timer is super accurate over long periods. One to keep an eye on.

Well what a great comp! Congrats to the Markus, Mark and Peter. And many thanks to Allen and the band of helpers. I'm sure a lot of us will have gone home as better pilots, thanks to the sheer intensity of flying for three days in such 'technical' conditions. Here are a few words, with a link to the photo gallery: https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/seo/index.php

Launch faces. Mike and Mike tie for “most aggressive”, I win “most like a sad bulldog”.

15 Pilots decided to take a punt on very changeable forecast. We were greeted at the slope with a very small amount of wind but blowing positively on the Ice Cream slope, as the forecast suggested, so we made our way over there. Unfortunately, we unpacked the equipment to realise that we had no wires for the buzzers! We did have some rather short testing wires in the box, so we came up with a system of buzzing by proxy where the turn judges would indicate the turn using flags, and someone in the centre would press the buttons on their behalf. We amused ourselves for a while until around 11:30 when the wind finally picked up to around 4m/s and blowing straight on to the slope: Round 1 was started at 12 o'clock. Times were mainly in the 60s or 70s, but Mark Redsell put in a 58.92 to win the round. Round 2 was got even slower with several times in the 80s, but at the end of the round, Paul Stubley put in a 53.82 as a rather large black rain cloud approached us. Round 3 began just as the rain came in. The first 2 flights were reflights and we were forced to take cover for around an hour. Eventually the rain cleared, leaving us with sunshine and a 9-10m/s wind! We restarted round 3 with slightly faster times, mainly in the 50s. Peter Gunning took the top spot with a 51.27. Round 4 got faster again! Times in the 40s and 50s with a 46.65 by Mark Redsell winning the round. Round 5 saw a few low 40s times with a splendid 42.22 by Graeme Mahoney. Round 6 started to slow up a bit, but Peter Gunning managed to find a 44.92 from somewhere. After 6 rounds flown: Fastest Time went to Graeme Mahoney with his 42.22 in round 5 Well done John! Big Thanks to Graeme Mahoney, William Fourie and Graham Hill for helping out with the centre and the proxy buzzing. Thanks to all who came and helped with the flagging, launching and setting up the course.

Well done Mike best newcomer interglide 2023 thanks to neil and paul for organising and for all the competitors for making the challenge happen.

A great day after a slow start on Levisham. Wind speed around the predicted level of 4 to 6 m/s but very crossed and getter more crossed! Eventually flying stopped as the wind swung to the North, not good for a West facing slope. However, forecast was for it to swing back to the West by 13:00. Time for lunch True to predictions, we were soon flying again, not only was the wind square on, but the speed had increased and was pushing 13m/s on occasion Still not ballistic but felt great to have some wind to work with. A happy bunch of 11 flyers managed 8 rounds in the time remaining. Some very close times ensued, with Peter Gunning in 1st sneaking past Mark Treble in 2nd place by a mere 4.47 points! With Paul Upton not far away in 3rd. FTD went to Mark T with a 40.53 in Round 3. Well done guys. All positions :- Full results to follow. Thanks to everyone for helping throughout the day, and great to see some old and some new faces on the slope. Baptism by fire for Richard Newsham, but great to see you giving F3F a go mate. Next event is a reserve date, due on the 17th Feb. Same again please! Jon

It's gonna depend on how difficult it is for a site to become registered. I don't believe the intention is for large swathes of the country to be registered as flying sites, rather for a few sites to be on the official list. This is the caa that called us all dangerous/criminal/incompetents, or words to that effect, in front of MPs not long ago. At the moment you can fly from the coast in many places with freedom. You want to blame model flyers for the drop in participation. When I started you could buy a model and fly it from any suitable hill with wonderful freedom. Now you need to register, pay a fee, pass a test, find an official site/install any pay for some id device etc etc. And it's the fault of the flyers and not the caa that participation has failed. Pull the other one.

Done ! Modern stripes meet Alpina classic style - very happy with that - stylish & very visible. Looks easy but was very tricky - lots of paper templates & masking tape to get the angles & spacing right so the wingtips & fin both looked right. I used vinyl instead of Oratrim - needed bigger/wider pieces - Oracal 651 - A4 sheets easily available on ebay - lots of colours - e.g. ebay item No. 133516758491 - seller diamantecrafts Phil.

Belated congrats to Pete on the win, and also to JP for his splendid league and Eurotour wins. And thanks to Jon, Mark and Rich for organising. Here are some pics, including some more experimental shots (for a change!) using a slow shutter speed. https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/l4/index.php Cheers - Mike

What a great English Open, 19 rounds flown in beautiful Wiltshire Sunshine, what’s not to like! JP showed us the way from the start, ultimately winning with a 1000 point lead!!! Superb flying John, really great to watch. Due to the number of rounds, most of the Whitesheet variability was smoothed out giving all pilots a fair share of both good and not so good air. Congrats to John for the win and Dave for third, very well deserved both of you. I was second, just can’t seem to win this one, been second 5 times, maybe next time? Spreadsheet to follow once I sort my email account out. Thanks to everyone for helping, out and making it one of the best Whitesheet comps ever. G

Just thought it was about time I wrote some comments about Richard and his top notch service at T9 Hobby Sport. I'm really grateful. Not only have I bought a huge number of receivers and other bits, and had prompt delivery and then quick help when asking for firmware upgrade codes, but it's always been very pleasant dealing with Richard. Then a couple weeks ago I ordered some parts and they went missing, and Richard was so quick to respond. When we couldn't find the parcel he uncomplainingly sent me replacements. To be clear this was a Royal Mail fault, not Richard's, and I'm so happy with his service. Thank you very much indeed!

apologies for the delay with the pics

Well, we had a great day today. Sunshine and cumulus clouds all day, a reasonable breeze but, never a problem which calmed off nicely for the fly-offs. 4 entries in F3L and 4 in F5L. 6 rounds flown plus a single round fly-off (top 2). It would have been nice to have had more but as an exercise in the viability of running 2 events with alternating rounds, it was a huge success. Some photos below, but the results were as follows: F3L Richard Newsham David Poole Pete Newman Lawrence Drennan F5L Alex Maxfield David Poole Rob Craddock Gordon Brown Prizes awarded down to 4th place! Many, many thanks to Alex Maxfield for the equipment, expertise and preliminary work that made this event a success. I would have wallowed without him. A few photos to follow:

YeeHaa!! Wild and Windy on Levisham for sure. Not known it so livelly, a case of hold on tight and hope for the best. Some terrific flights from Pengy who also had FTD of 33.25 Results after 13 Rounds :- Different slope tomorrow thankfully. Meet in the main car park at 9pm Jon

Wow another successful Winter League, although at one point it did look terminal. The morning started of brilliantly, blue sky, 20mph winds square onto the hill, what more could we want? The course was quickly setup and flying started at 10:45. But by round 4 ominous clouds were gathering on the horizon and by mid round, fog had descended over the Hole, with only the bases visible through the clag. Flying stopped for the next few hours. Fog midday , now that's a first! However, the Met Office predicted it would clear by 14:00, and full marks to them, we were flying again by 14:15. With only 7 pilots, 10 rounds were soon completed, and whilst we ran over our elected finish time, the lengthening days meant at 16:00 it was still very flyable. Some variability in the air, but Mark R was a clear winner, Steve in second and Richard in third! FTD went to Rich with a 43.95 in R10. Well done to all. All positions :- Full Results to follow Thanks to everyone for their support. Next event 2nd March, roll-on! Jon

@Jon_E I plan to take part on Saturday. It will my first F3F competition. I have flown from Levisham twice now so I'm familiar with the location. I plan to arrive around 9:30am. I have read the FAI rules for F3F but my memory is not too good. I get the jist of flying between two marks ten times as fast as I can. I hope I can produce a sub 60 seconds. I will be flying my RCRCM Typhoon. I'm sure my nervous twitchy fingers will mean I'm all over the place but looking forward to giving it a go. Regards Richard Newsham.

Dome like flyers need domes ! Culmstock Armada beacon Phil.

I maidened this, up on White sheet today. It’s the hard shell version, MKS 6625 minis in the tail, and 6160’s in the wings. Hacker direct drive A40, and 6s lipo’s. 2 Jeti 3100 li-ion packs powering the Jeti rex12 assist receiver and a Rsat2, and a separate Jeti vario. Guided by an old school ds16. Flew just like a big f3f model.

A long-standing principle of the laws of England is, I believe, that things that are not expressly forbidden are permitted, which is why I have always felt free, particularly on open-access land to try any slope that looks promising. If at some time it is decreed that only currently used sites may be used in the future this principle would be violated. Understanding new slopes is an integral part of the skill in slope soaring.

First, a bit about my design decisions and findings: My early encounters with the class; it looked like some of the current designs were barely fit for my purpose. The typical appeal for light weight seemed to result in cases of serious flutter and/or difficulties in returning after following a thermal any distance downwind. I also looked at various kits and chatted with others regarding quality and their build experiences. I suspected I could come up with my own design which would be a better fit for my criterion; namely Low cost, cheap power train, 550g or less, good thermal response and tough enough for typical UK weather conditions. Not to mention the satisfaction of flying my own design. Fuselage ideas: I’m not too keen on carbon booms because they’re difficult to ‘field repair’ , cost more than balsa builds and they dislike shock loads compared to traditional materials. Result, a balsa & lite ply fuselage with sufficient space for RC gear, battery of choice etc. Also the cross section should be predominantly rounded for minimum wetted surface and torsional stiffness; also it’s my preference for looks! the wing should bolt on the top of the fus’ for easy changes, and the tail feathers need to be fully removable without any spikey bits sticking out for easy transport. Wings: For relative ease of build, I’ve avoided a fully elliptical plan because the benefit is marginal in this class when compared to increasing tapered panels approximating an elliptical plan. The leading edges of each panel could also be made strongly and ‘ding proof’ with straight carbon rod and strip. Airfoil choice was originally ag35 to ag37 which was easy to build because of the ‘flat’ underside. I then experimented with the ag24 to ag27 series with greater success; so I settled on that. The sections transition throughout the span. The polyhedral wing needed to divided into 3 sections, with a wide centre spoiler and compact transportation. The spoiler chord has become thinner and increased in width in the latest version through experimentation. The centre spoiled doesn’t have any noticeable effect on tailplane authority. Tailplane: The fin has a couple of 2mm carbon rod spars which go into aluminium tubes in the fuselage. A single M3 screw goes through the fus’ into the bottom of the fin to hold it all together. The stabiliser is sandwiched between fin and fuselage by the same components. Electronics: Low cost motor choice was determined by diameter & being able to get to 100M in 15 sec. This leaves 15 to push out in the direction of expected thermals! 23mm dia. results in a relatively small nose section and complements a 32mm spinner. 8x5.5 prop or 9x5 work well with the motor size. The motors used so far cost between £17 and £34 so unlikely to break the bank. A 20A esc is ample. In fact I’m using 15A in my models. batteries are 450 to 550mAh 3s which gives 2 flights with safety margin, and 3 flights for new batteries with full capacity. Tail servos are typically 9g to 11g. 5g 20x8mm is used for the spoiler. A DLG style Z spring made from 0.5mm piano wire is used for spoiler closing. Tail servos are in the fus’ forward of the wing for easy access. 2mm carbon rods are used to the control surfaces. The rods go through holes in the fuselage formers without any guide tubing. This saves tail weight and I’ve never had one fail, so feeding a new one through the fuselage isn’t necessary. The former spacing is adequate for guiding the rods without them buckling. all the electronics, with the exception of the spoiler servo, fits in the nose which makes for easy wiring. The nose length was made to balance the Raven without needing additional weight. There’s ample space under the wing at the C of G for ballast if needed. You could easily fit 300g but I’ve not had to use more than 100g in windy conditions. Next instalment will be the fuselage build. Watch this space if you’re interested!

Purito E - Towton Battlefield - 35.5 Minutes Got to the field at 16:00 Hrs, the sky was very hazy but constant, nothing really visible 3 flights were just up and down, then on this flight I found some narrow lift and tried to stay in it but it was moving away from the flying field, stuggled to get any real height so turned back to the field, on the way the model got bounced around so turned around and again just stayed with the lift, topping at 426m, with the hazy sky it was difficult to see the model so spoilers out and a decent to around 200m, after a few minutes the air turned cold, flew the model to see if there was anything but nothing strong enough to get me back up. So flight time of 35.5 minutes.

Bramhall, F5-RES, Fresh, 12mins 5 secs

Purito E - Dishforth Airfield - Time Claimed 15 Minutes The second flight on that battery connection is the flight claimed, the flight before was just up and down, no lift, then the second flight I found lift from the top of the power run, pushed the model out this time and managed to stay in the lift. This was not a bad flight to say that the model has only been out today for the first flights so quite happy with the model.

Really enjoyed the weekend. Well done to the top three and thanks to Graeme, Nigel and all helpers. Here's my brief report, with link to photos: https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/eo/index.php Re the spreadsheet. There seem to be two distinct issues, The first is to do with Windows' stricter security for macro-enabled spreadsheets which results in a red banner with the message "Microsoft has blocked macros from running because the source of this file is untrusted". The solution to right-click on the file (in the Windows file explorer), select Properties, go to the General tab, and choose 'unblock'. The second issue occurs when running the 64 bit version of Office. I can't reproduce it here as I have 32-bit office, but I understand that its due to some specific incompatibilities in the VBA code. Microsoft have some guidelines for making the code compatible with both 32- and 64-bit office, but they seem to suggest that it's not always possible. I'll have a look when I get a mo.

Had a surprisingly good day today, ending up 5th. We had all the conditions today. Hot and calm in the morning and ending up 7-12m/s wind and overcast in the late afternoon into the evening. We started r6 at 6:50pm! Last flight, 5mins. Finished at nearly 8pm. There were some really epic flights by some great pilots. Flew my strong bamf 2 with 108g ballast, so roughly 345g. It wasn’t really enough. After 2 1min something flights, I changed tactic and managed to surf a tree line to make 3:32. Was happy with that, but didn’t think it was good enough. Turned out I was only 6secs off winning the round! It was a tough afternoon. The last two rounds really churned up the leader board.

So far, so good. Models all arrived intact. We didn’t drive into a river. We’ve had a sleep and breakfast. Oh, we did get an emergency alert about a bear on the way here! Also, the hotel is pretty lush.

Super day of racing today. Absolutely made up with a win in round 9 with the venerable old Extreme. Huge thanks to Ian Mason for his comment: "Imagine how quick a decent pilot with a decent plane would have gone". I think he was trying to sell me a Saker!

Medina e | f5| 9th July | 35.02 Got out at 10 am before wind hit. Zero wind, sun and lift. Wind arrived at 11.30. sun appeared and good lift ( waves of warm air) No fly zone down wind so pushed forward, the more I pushed the better the lift. Lots of surfing and slipping left/right. Couple of climb outs. Next flight, lift was booming, but I was either going backwards or worried about air frame so aborted. Was even a handful with DLG so pretty happy with over 30 mins.

Thanks to Allen, JP and Graeme for running this remarkable comp. The 3 days were quite challanging. A lot of ups and downs. But this is what it makes so interessting and what makes a real race. Was a pleasure to stay with you in south england. These 3 days have generated a lot of good memories! Hope to see you soon on the slopes. Markus

Latest table - thanks all. Nice to see a couple of newcomers joining in as well.

A bit later than planned, but many thanks to Jon and Mark for organising. Shame about the lack of wind on Sunday, but we did at least get 12 rounds in on the first day. Brief report and pics: https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/nats/index.php

Eli RES - Towton Battlefield - Yorkshire - 07 May 2023 - 21 minutes and 32 seconds. 8 launches into dead air, 3 to 4 minutes flight time and then managed to find lift in front of a dark looking cloud, managed to get follow the lift until the model was well down wind and I had to bring it back, as I did I felt the cold air come through, managed 21 minutes and 32 seconds so quite please with that after a day at Dishforth Airfield with only 4 to 5 minute flights all day.

Hi guys, apologies for not adding at least some detail to my monthly comp entry. At our club flying site (Truro & district MFC) the day was warm although much breezier than forecast. So as it was a maiden with my new Slite V2 I gave it a few hand launches before committing to the restricted length bungee that we are operating in Cornwall (50m line and 10m rubber). The model tracked well and after a mediocre launch (as announced by other club members) I flew straight into lift under a small dark cloud and without a single thermal turn up I went to a point where I could easily just fly forward to the next incoming powder puff and slope soaring style up we want again! This continued for 30 minutes or so after which sink finally arrived and down I came, but due to the altitude that took a while and finally some 7 minutes later I landed back on the patch without the need for spoilers - the air really got bad for a while! So a good first flight, and whilst I have some pondering to do in respect of a few challenges in the models pitch handling, I counted myself lucky to have had such a flight, but that's why I love this sport. Cheers!

Well I'm glad that the prospect of a lie-in didn't prevail over a mad dash to the Bwlch - it certainly went a lot better than one could have expected! Many thanks to Mark and helpers for organsing a promising start to the season. Report and links to pics here: https://rc-soar.com/gallery/2023/bmfal1/ (note, the number of rounds quoted in the text is wrong, to be corrected) Looking forward to the Nats! - Mike

We had some great interactions today. The one pair of kites kept on coming over to investigate our DLGs, maybe worried we were a competing pair? @MikeDLG managed to get this video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_kite

Talk about the Wild West, We had it in spades this weekend. First Levisham and today on the NW Ridge The Wind carried on from where it left off yesterday, strong variable and bumpy. To add to the pilots work load, the walk to the landing area was through knee high heather which just added to the physical exhaustion of flying in those conditions. In order to put an end on proceedings, it was agreed to make 20 rounds the limit for the comp. Thus at the end, with some truly inspiring flying, in first place and CoC Champion 2024 was Paul Garnett, closing in on second place was Mark Redsell, and with a terrific third place was William Fourie, moving up from 5th place the day before. Fastest time of the weekend was retained by Paul with a 33.25 Great comp, and I did promise some great weather, maybe a little less great next time. Look forward the summer league, and see all you guys soon Jon

OK guys, to put my commitment where my mouth is. As a 1 time only offer, if a group of pilots want to order 3-4 Wyvern models, with the aim of racing (I hope) they can be discounted to £600 each. Check out willow racing for details. That's pretty much what I paid for my first Pike WR 24 years ago. Ian

In light of no improvement in forecast and getting worse in some, I’ve decided to cancel.