The day was much better than the forecast and started. It was cold with the breeze blowing straight in, but as the day progressed the wind dropped to make it a perfect day and and flying continued to just before 4 o'clock. Thank you to everyone for making it another excellent day. There was twelve of us on site with three new attendees.

With another competition year now over saw the Grand Finale ending up being the same weekend as last year, the only difference being that the 2023 Team Selection event being added in as well.

As has become customary this year, the weather leading up to the competition weekend predicted probably everything apart from snow, from dry to wet, light to high winds. Given that Buckminster calendar has been full for most weekends this year and that British Summer Time was moving back to GMT (UTC) on the weekend of the 30th October, the was no room to postpone or reschedule this competition so it had to go ahead barring the obvious “unflyable” conditions.

The day started at Buckminster with all entrants arriving at 8am or thereabouts to rain and totally overcast conditions and clearly not flyable so we all had to sit it out.
Thankfully, the Goldsmith Hangar was available and several entrants brought their models into the hangar to assemble them in readiness for flying.
A special note of appreciation must go to Nigel Ashworth who with his wife had made and brought along about 30 very delicious Scones, complete with Clotted cream and Jam. Also, I don’t think I’ve seen or heard of so many weather Apps in use but you had to be there to witness it just awaiting that break in the rain. The other good thing to come out of the delayed start was looking at others’ airframes as there was clearly a lot of learnings to be gained from looking and talking to the owners, a good term for this could be “cross-fertilisation of ideas and techniques”.

Following discussions with the Committee members and we had a full house present apart from Steve Hunt, it was decided to drop round 1 and start with round 2 for everyone but the Team Selection entries to fly an extra round to enable the best two of three to count.

Flying started from about 1pm with a south easterly wind direction with intermittent low-level cloud intermixed with partial blue skies. Ask Steve Plummer how low the clouds were at times as he lost his model in one of the clouds for about 5 seconds but seemed like an eternity. Thankfully, being YS powered and not electric meant that even on tick over the sound of the engine could be heard and eventually one of the many spotters witnessed it coming out of the cloud. Across all schedules, we managed to complete 25 flights so all in all a very successful end to the 2022 Competition Season with a team selected for the 2023 World Championships next September in Australia.

My thanks to all entrants, judges Al, Nico, Adrian, and Eugene and Yaz Madden for the Notaumatics and scoring and of course Phil Lewis who although not present still had to do a lot behind the scenes and for posting the results.

Final positions
Team Selection
Thomas David 1000. Kevin Caton 962.17. Dan Workman 905.74
P-23
Adrian Harrison 1000. Steve Plummer 1000.

Masters
Peter Madden 1000. Jerzy Slowikowski 925.75. Robert Harrison 867.85

Intermediate
Graham Gooch 1000. Barry Buxton 938.5.

Clubman
Brian Bates 1000. Brian Ball 954.87

Judges
Al Williams, Nico Blease, Adrian Harrison

CD, report and some pictures Graham Gooch. Remaining pictures Ashley Hoyland

BMFA Nationals 1st & 2nd October 2022

Well, what should have been the end of season Grand Finale during this weekend, ended up being our BMFA Nationals as no other venue or suitable dates could be found.

As already having been mentioned on the GBRCAA Forum by Adrian Harrison, the week leading up to any competition can be a little bit stressful for the CD and this was no exception with winds of 30+mph being predicted. Mindful that this was to be a two day event and that quite a few entrants were travelling long distances and involving Hotel accommodation for some, it’s always a though call but the decision was made 48 hours in advance to go ahead.

Saturday started with a mixture of blue skies and cloud but with very strong westerly winds fortunately, straight up the runway. Following “Failsafe” checks carried out by Eddie Scott the Competition Flightline Director assisted at times by Yaz Madden and the standard Pilots briefing, flying started at 09.15am. Flying continued throughout the day until the good ol’ British weather had to show itself with two short outbreaks of rain. One of these coincided when Malcolm Balfour was flying, not to be perturbed, Malcolm continued with his schedule saying afterwards that he can always dry off his transmitter but would much rather have the less windy conditions during the rain shower, true spirit of a top pilot.

In order to fully evaluate the Notaumatics electronic scoring system, it was decided that our non flying judges, Al Williams, Stuart Mellor and Peter Scoles would judge the P & F and P-only schedules and pilot judges, Garry Peacock, Kevin Caton, Adrian Harrison, Malcolm Balfour, Dan Workman and Jim Fallowfield to judge the remaining schedules. Using more than the usual two judges allows the Notaumatic system to average out the scores for each flight which are then normalised to 1000 for the highest score and then decreases as a percentage of the winning score for each round. Additionally, with the use of five judges, allows the system to take the highest and lowest judges score, discards them and averages the remaining three scores for each manoeuvre during every flight. Sounds complicated maybe, but the Notaumatics easily copes with the data processing and offers each pilot a more averaged and consistent view of their flight.

It is very worthy of note from the Judges that the standards of flying throughout the whole weekend were exceptionally high across all schedules especially when considering the challenges of the wind strength and thankfully without even a broken prop or undercarriage leg.

My thanks go to all competition entrants without whom there would not be a comp, all our Judges, Phil (Mr Notaumatics) Lewis, Eddie Scott and Yaz, Ashley Hoyland for the photographs and Beryl for keeping us going with refreshments (Over 90 pints of water went through the Tea Urn during the weekend).

Results:-

P&F
Malcolm Balfour 4000 (worthy of note that Malcolm managed 1000 in all 6 rounds)
Matt Hoyland 3912.59
Dan Workman 3868.96

P-only
Javad Aghababazadehe 4000 (worthy of note that Javad managed 1000 in all 6 rounds)
Adrian Harrison 3836.26
Ken Moss 3748.51

MASTERS
Peter Madden 3980.99
Dean Blair 3945.85
Mike Pole 3886.65

INTERMEDIATE
Robert Harrison 4000
Graham Gooch 3907.33

CLUBMAN
Brian Ball 3964.16
Brian Bates 3943.24
Clive Sharp 1744.53

CD & report Graham Gooch

CD Report for 3 September 2022 Competition at Knettishall ....................... Link to more photographs: https://imgur.com/a/5ahylfT

After much speculation on the weather, the day of the competition dawned, well at 7 am(!), fair with the wind sock hanging vertically downwards! The sun soon burned off any low-lying mist while the arriving pilots were greeted with egg and bacon baps by our wonderful caterers Irene and Richard. By the way, I’m pleased to say that they will be supporting us next year as well!

20th European Championship, Zamora, Spain. 21st to 28th August 2022

Team Manager: Adrian Harrison.

GBR Team: Thomas David, Malcolm Balfour, Kevin Caton.

Contest Director: Ross Donovan

Judges: Adrian Mansell and Les Przytocki.

The Ramsey Model Aero Club had kindly agreed to host an F3A competition at the club field in Warboys. This was the first F3A competition since Covid, although competitions have been held at Warboys since the early 90’s.

Like most other flying sites, the grass at Warboys had long since disappeared to be replaced by a dustbowl!! On the day there was an SSW wind of around 12mph occasionally gusting to 20mph.

There were 16 pilots entered in the competition, 8 in P23, 4 in Master, 2 in Intermediate and 2 in Clubman.

We had Steve Burgess and Malcolm Harris making their way down from Bonny Scotland to compete. Mike Wood made a late appearance at the competition due to car problems but managed to fly in the third round.

Flying started at 9:00 with the FAI P23 class, moving on to Masters, then Intermediate and finally Clubman class. The competition moved on at a brisk pace with all pilots using the ready box.

By 13:15 the first 2 rounds had been flown and a lunch break was taken. During lunch Adrian Mansell flew his own design F3A model and demonstrated considerable skills.

The third round kicked off at 14:00 and was over around 16:20.

Certificates were handed out for the various classes by the Chairman of RMAC, Mike Francis.
A special mention of Keith Brightman who last flew in a F3A comp nearly 30 years ago; his last flight of the day showed he still had it!!

The Warboys site is excellent for F3A competition, and my thanks to the club for allowing us to use it. I hope the competition will run again next year.

Podium
FAI P23: First Place Garry Peacock. 2nd Steve Burgess. 3rd George Drever

Masters: First Place: Pete Madden. 2nd Phil Lewis. 3rd Mike Pole.

Intermediate: First Place: Graham Gooch. 2nd Keith Brightman

Clubman: First Place Brian Bates. 2nd Clive Sharpe.

Report Ross Donovan. Photographs: Steve Laws

At the last minute I had to miss this one (my apologies to all) but thanks to John, Al, Barry and Vince the day was a success even though there was a brisk wind (breeze?) straight down the runway. Just one aileron detached I understand.

Contest Director: Alan Williams

Knettishall Competition – 18th June 2022

Contest Director: Peter Jenkins;

Thankfully, the blazing heat of the hottest day in June, was replaced by a very much cooler and, at times, wetter day. Nevertheless, the visibility and wind conditions were challenging. The rain clouds were blowing towards the NE whereas the surface wind was from the 180 deg opposite direction i.e. coming from the NE! We had complete cloud cover all day but the varying degrees of grey made it challenging to track the aircraft as it traversed the various grey hues!

We were reminded that Covid had not gone away when Graham Gooch had to withdraw having tested positive for Covid on Friday. Bad luck Graham and hope you get shot of the bugs quickly. We had been at 19 pilots at one stage but on the day, due to various reasons, we were down to 15 and ultimately only 14 flew – I’ll save the blushes as to why one didn’t fly!

I should also like to thank the Bury MFC for allowing us to use Knettishall for this competition and for two stalwart Club members, Ron Gray and Ian McDowell, for helping us with spotting duties since we share the field with full size aircraft. However, given the lowish cloud base and much rain, we never did get even a passing light aircraft to disturb us.

Our, now, regular caterers, Irene and Richard, started the day off with bacon baps which went down very well! (Irene says that next time it will be egg and bacon baps!). They reacted quickly to lunch time being advanced by an hour to feed the assembled pilots and spectators following an unforecast rain squall. They even survived a potentially dangerous event when an unusually strong gust of wind blew their gazebo off them! A group of strong chaps quickly had the gazebo under control and back into place this time tied firmly to the big gazebo which was weighted down with water carriers!

Eugene did a great job setting up the Notaumatics although the upgrade in software standard caused some confusion on how to deal with pilots who had withdrawn. Eugene rose to the occasion and, with a bit of help from Phil, on the phone, Eugene managed to get the upgraded software system functioning fine.
FAI(P) saw a battle for the top two places between Garry Peacock and Javad Aghababazadah with Garry winning all 3 rounds. George Drever, back into competition, led the chasing pack. Mark Allen had his most successful FAI competition ever by claiming 4th place. Very well done Mark! Eugene, initially distracted by his Notaumatic duties, improved with each round. Mike Wood, Ross Donovan and Peter Jenkins completed in that order.

Masters saw the return to competition, after a gap of at least 10 years, by Pete Madden. Pete had recently acquired an Element and flew this to great effect to win. Pete told me that he had learned a huge amount during the competition and hoped to put that into practice for the next one. Pete’s daughter was calling for him but will need to take a box to stand on next time so she can see over his head! Pete had his family there in force!

Mike Rieder had the misfortune to lose his well flown Allure two weeks before the competition when the entire battery pack and shelf departed at the bottom of the half 8-sided loop. He has quickly got to grips with his replacement airframe, an Elixir with the CRS contra and, despite having just 20 flights in the week preceding the competition to get to grips with the Elixir, he managed to place a close 2nd. Chris Bond placed 3rd while Mike Pole, recently upgrading to Masters, placed 4th. Keep it up Mike Pole!

Intermediate ended up with a 2-way struggle with Mick Broad just keeping his nose ahead of Neil Martin. Neil had flown Clubman at the 2019 competition at Knettishall.

We had one full time judge, thank you Les Przytocki, who was supported by Mike Rieder, Garry Peacock and Chris Bond. Well done to Chris for completing his first stint as a GBRCAA judge! We really do need to have people step forward to take on the judging role and not continue to rely on the good old faithfulls, so thank you Chris.

It was noticeable that the number of Clubman entries appears to have dried up. We need to think of ways to attract more entrants as right now its looking a bit dire. However, of the 10 pilots who flew Clubman in 2019, four were flying at this competition in Intermediate and Masters so we were doing something right!

The photo gallery is somewhat deficient in photos as the planned group photo over lunch was overtaken by the downpour that meant we took lunch early and after that we were dodging rain showers for a bit. My apologies to those who were not photographed with their models! I promise to do better next time. Only a couple of the photos manages to convey just how cold it was for mid-June! Those who had turned up in shorts and sandals were at a distinct disadvantage from those with longs and socks! It certainly was a shock to the system after a blazing hot Friday, but we managed to get through 3 rounds without any mishaps.

Look forward to seeing everyone again on 3rd September at Knettishall for which there are still vacancies!

Photos courtesy of Ron Gray and Peter Jenkins.

Peter Jenkins

Eleven enthusiastic pilots on a perfect day

Contest Director: Bob Rowland.

Podium:

FAI (P) First Place Keith Jackson, 2nd Dan Workman, 3rd David Balfour.

Masters: First Place Jerzy Slowikowski, 2nd John Collister, 3rd Chris Bond.

Intermediate : Graham Gooch.

Clubman: Brian Bates.

Photographs: Keith Jackson