SEBMFA SCALE DAY 2011

Keith Miller reports on the scale event at the Hastings MFG field held on 31 July

Once again held with the cooperation of Hastings MFC at their excellent Middlebridge site, between Eastbourne and Bexhill on Sunday, July 31st. The event is basically just a fly-in and this year, for the first time, we included an Almost Ready To Fly class in addition to the Built-Up variety. The entrants are asked to judge what they think are the best 3 models in their class and prizes are awarded accordingly, with the best Built-up model receiving the Towner Trophy.

We were extremely lucky with the weather, which was bright and sunny although a bit of a breeze crosswind made it a little tricky for those with marginal power. A slight hiccup at Leicester office had resulted in the date not appearing in the BMFA News Events Calendar which may have reduced the entry, but this was nevertheless good and of excellent quality.

Outside of the competition flights we were treated to various breathtaking demonstrations, notably by local Colin Hammond with his 1/6th scale Lancaster and the commentary to this was given by Tony Banfield, who is a member of the Hastings club, but also an ex C.O. of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, when he flew their Lancaster at many airshows worldwide. He also happens to have been a junior model clubmate of the writer's in the 50's. There was also an impressive and exceptionally precise aerobatic display by Mike Donnelly of the Bickley club with his large Ventura gas turbine powered model.

It was good to see that there are still some real model builders around as the number of built-up models well exceeded the ARTFs but generally, the standard of both types was very high. Thankfully, only one "incident" occurred during the day when a Spitfire was forced to land out, unfortunately right in the middle of the adjoining fishing stream. It was retrieved successfully, presumably using the right bait!

The various models entered were as follows: