2nd AREA MEETING / ASHDOWN FOREST / 22 March 2009

Report from Gary Oulds
North by North West

Due to the North North Westerly wind forecast we flew across the Misbourne Valley side of the Forest, generally towards the Airmen’s Grave Memorial. Conditions warm and sunny.
Flyers parked up at Friends and then walked across the road, setting up along the ridge track just the other side of the trees. I think the first flyer away was probably Crawley’s Robin Willes with a P30 ground hugger of a flight. I think he also flew Mini Vintage and glider flights during the day aided by Peter Norman, also flying MV.
Terry Knight had a couple of promising looking trim flights with his A2 but the follow up comp flight itself disappointed when it spun in rather tight on glide…this actually proved quite awkward to find even though it hadn’t gone very far, it had buried itself nose first into a hidden hazard of a pond. Mike Cook also dropped in despite what looked to be good conditions, the glider flyers did struggle. John Oulds managed a couple of late in the day glider flights, one of which Mike Richardson bought back after it appeared to spin through some trees.
Trees actually featured on and off throughout, catching a few models out early on in the day. Ken Taylor’s first Wakefield flight spent a good hour or two stuck high up in the canopies. During the recovery one wing tip was knocked off, but this was successfully zapped back together and he was able to go on to complete his RAFA score, I believe dropping just 28seconds - so pretty good effort considering.
Trevor Grey having won this event in the past was out of luck this time, dogged by a few mechanical problems with an F1B he hadn’t flown for a while.
I was hoping to help pick up a few Plugge points by flying F1B instead of glider, it didn’t quite go according to plan really. I started by hooking my wakefield left at launch on my first flight, due partly to cramp in my hand through waiting for so long. I then missed the air completely with the second, found trees with the next two and short of time near the end of the day, VIT’d the model into the ground twice on my last through timer failure. Surprisingly I got away with little damage but an 8 second flight rather ruined what was a run of steadily improving flight times.
Alex flew better with his Prima wakefield this year, the model seemed much more of a potent force than previous and a mid-week trimming session I'm sure helped him tune up his model prior to the comp. Notably, his flights were much more consistent.
One flight hooked into possibly one of if not the best patch of air of the day; a real boomer more than half the flight descending on DT, just about stayed on the Forest.
One flyer from each club made the fly-off stages nationally. Maidstone’s John Richardson managed to master the conditions during the day, being the only glider flyer to string together a full score, rather satisfyingly reaching the fly-off with his recently refurbished model by the end of the day.
Peter Cameron for Crawley also did very well. Apart from helping Alex, he had also flown a P30 and maxed out in Mini Vintage, but short of time, he had to leave his Hepcat down wind and fly his Lulu glider instead come the fly-offs, and unfortunately this stalled down off initially what looked a promising launch.
Geoff Stringer rattled off probably one of the best performances of the day overall with a well deserved five maxes in Wakefield. Walking back with him after retrieving his model, he suggested his fly-off effort deserved better, the model was timed down to the ground in under 2mins.
Another nice day on the Forest. We can’t complain, after all, this time last year it snowed!

Hope the weather stays fair for the next meeting 5 April.

The national BMFA results can be found on the Free Flight Technical Committee website.