Sunday 10 March 2019

Saturday 8th March - Itford Hill

Hi Everyone,
Today we decided to fly on Saturday as the forecast for Sunday was very strong W winds, Saturday was a little less windy (so they said !). We met at 10:00 at the bottom of Itford Hill and there was a great turnout again - Rob, Paul, Ian D, Scotty, Robin, John M, Tony and Rob P - that's a very pleasing number as sometimes in the past we've been down to 2 or 3.
On waking up the hill two things became obvious  - 1. the wind was more SW than W and 2. It was far stronger than forecast...…. nevertheless we carried on and decided to try foamies.
As far as I can remember there was a collection of Wildthings, 2 Ninjas, an M60 and Scotts Komet foamie. Rob P had brought just the Erwin and it was decided that the weather didn't suit such an expensive and potentially easily damaged model (carbon fibre), so Rob didn't get to fly in the end.
Everybody had something in the air at some time and I remember being in amongst 6 other models at one time - it was very gusty and everyone was trying to just make headway and keep the models from hitting - although there was one coming together between John M and another model, both survived.
Ian D had an unfortunate incident where he ended up watching the wrong model, so his Wildthing went rogue and Ian had a long search to find it (which he did at the bottom of the hill somewhere).
While I was talking to Scotty, some shouted that my Phase 6 had got broken - I couldn't see how as it was in the bag with just the tail sticking out. John M had been forced to land and in doing so his Wildthing hit the rudder of my Phase 6 and snapped it off - oh well, I wasn't going to fly it anyway !
Later Paul announced that he had a heavy landing with the M60 and on inspection it turned out the wing had come loose and he lost the use of 1 elevon, hence a hard landing, the fuselage was also broken in the impact.
That was the time we all decided to call it a day.
I'm sure other things happened, but that's all I remember plus there were hundreds of walkers, bikes and some tethered hang gliders sharing the hill with us.
Thanks to all who came - I enjoyed it a lot.....

Rob

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