A good turnout of control line sport flyers for the Area Open Day, alas only 4 entries for the Absent Friends competition.
The weather was very windy, the north east wind was at times vicious causing lots of problems for all the flyers. I have yet to fly at Buckminster when there has not been very difficult wind conditions. After the very disappointing entry at the central England location the South Birmingham club were hoping that Buckminster would product a better entry. It was unfortunately still very small. With John Alcock settling on his Arley score it gave a great chance for the others to try and improve their performances.
When I did the pilots briefing I offered the entry the option of delaying the start time to allow the weather to improve. The entry wanted to fly on regardless of the weather. Once again Tony Field judged.
The entry consisted of Dave Cowburn using a Keil Kraft Spectre powered by a Tom Ridley Tiger Major engine.
Paul Cooper flying a Spectre using an OS FP25 glowplug engine, Myself with the ex Eric Hawthorne Carl Goldberg Shoestring with SC 25 glowplug engine. Russell from the Nottingham club, a very late entry, was allowed to fly a model which strictly speaking was too modern but the rest of the entry decided to encourage someone who was keen enough to have a go. However, in future, the club will insist on correct specification model in all respects.
It was very obvious that Dave Cowburn’s model really suited the difficult conditions being fast enough to power through the high wind.
Paul Cooper used his experience to make real fist of a job in coping with the wind. Russell’s Mini Slow was extremely fast and had no problem with wind but his inexperience showed with loops and bunts that were too small. The vintage schedule requires loops and bunts that fly from 6 feet at the bottom and up to 60 degree line at the top of the loop/bunt. I have written about how many sport flyers try to fly loops at far too tight a radius.
Bringing up the rear of the entry was your scribe. After the Arley event where the model cut out as soon as it went inverted I was determined to find out what caused the problem. In spite of all the work the engine run was very poor.
In the second round, Dave Cowburn was very consistent and looked a winner. Paul Cooper struggled with the wind and hit the ground very hard with self and model. Paul was shaken the model looked a right off. Russell also broke his model.
I have flown in some rough weather but never have been as grateful of the wrist strap on the handle. I was partly lifted off my feet and how I finished the flight and got all the elements in the correct order and landing reasonably escapes me, the wind was evil!
The 3rd round was rather short of takers. Dave flew again with no problems. After the awful second round I decided to give the Stunt Queen a go. The John Alcock PAW 19D never missed a beat and the model cut through the wind like a knife and, in spite of really having a battle to keep up with the high speed, I did the best flight of mine from the two events! I should have flown the Stunt Queen for all my flights!
The final result best two out of a possible 6 flights.
1st Dave Cowburn.
2nd Trevor Tennant
3rd John Alcock.
Trevor Tennant
Sept 2026
