Tuesday at Devil's Dyke

Graham U and I met up at Devil's Dyke car park at 12:30 today for some NE wind flying.
When we arrived there was a group of German glider fliers already there, they all had mouldies and one or two were Dynamic Soaring over the back of the hill - directly into the Dyke. Their models were screaming and must have been hitting up to 200 mph..... quite dramatic. The rest of them seemed to be practicing various repetitive manoeuvres across the hill on the windward side. We guessed that they were maybe getting ready for a competition ? Anyway, we enjoyed talking to them and watching them flying.
As we were walking to the hill with our models, Graham realised that he was carrying his black German army helmet with him (the one he uses for the camera) and we decided that the present company might not appreciate the gesture , so it was quickly put on the ground out of sight - don't want to start another war !!!!!

Graham and I started to fly - Graham had his Ridge Ryder and I had my unflown (by me) Jart. Both did well in the strongish wind despite there being sleet , rain and snow at times......

Here's a picture of the incoming storm

Graham then set up his Stork and I launched that for him. It was most stable and very keen to climb, in fact it went so high that Graham was having trouble getting it back to a manageable height.

After a while he landed and we decided to try my Mini Blade which I had just re-programmed with some down elevator to counter the pitching up on full flaps. It too flew brilliantly, but when I tested the flaps at height, there seemed to be too much down elevator and it nose-dived. I recovered it and carried on flying, but was trying to work out how to land this rocket without full flaps. Eventually we determined that half flaps would slow it enough (which it did), and when I was almost down, I switched the flaps off for a level landing. However, in error I put full flaps on and the resulting nose-dive proved fatal for the Mini Blade !! Oh well, that's an expensive lesson to learn....

SO despite that mishap I felt that I had a good days flying with Graham, I got to see some Dynamic Soaring and some brilliant German fliers. Graham had a great couple of flights with his excellent Stork, my Jart flew very well and we also had a nice cup of coffee and lemonade in the pub afterwards....

Anyone know of a good mouldie RTF - about 2m wingspan ?


Update - yesterday evening, I managed to do a deal with Tim H for his unflown RCRCM Mini Vector. It's RTF and I am picking it up in the next day or two... Many thanks Tim and Paul for your sterling help...

Rob