Friday 22nd October at Itford Hill

 Today we decided to try out Itford Hill as there seemed to be a break in the rotten wet weather and the wind was forecast as a Westerly.

Rob S and Kevin M met at 08:30 at the layby and walked up to the top by the bushes. There wasn't a great deal of wind but Rob launched the club trainer and surprisingly it found lift and was going really well. Kevin then decided to launch his Wildthing and that also was doing very well. Rob and Kevin made some adjustments to Kevin's Wildthing because it had been set up for him as a novice flyer and was feeling a bit unresponsive. After making the adjustments to the control throws it behaved very much better and Kevin had over 2 hours of flying. Kevin also brought his Middle Phase which he had re-worked since last time to make the ailerons independent by using 2 micro servos. Rob and Kevin both flew it for quite a long time but on landing it Rob managed to hit the ground a little hard and the tail section now needs re-gluing.

After nearly 2 hours they were joined by Mark J who also had his Wildthing and an Erwin carbon-fibre model. Mark flew both his models and by then the wind had picked up and was getting pretty strong.

They were then joined by Chris C who brought his mouldie 2.7 mtr which had flaps and airbrakes. Chris only had time for 1 flight today but he really enjoyed himself and his landing with the flaps and airbrakes was textbook !

At 12:00 Rob, Chris and Kevin left but Mark was staying on to take advantage of the beautiful weather and great lift.

Rob STanley

Saturday 9th October at Ditchling Beacon

 It was decided to try Ditchling Beacon on Saturday 9th Oct, but on arrival there was very little wind.

The view was spectacular because there was fog down at the bottom of the hill and only tall trees could be seen poking through the gloom. At the top it was pretty good weather so we tried out our DLGs.

There was Paul H, Rob S, Bill H and Gordon S (who didn't have a model with him).

Rob and Bill tried out Bill's HK DLG which needed  some fine tuning but was flying pretty well.

Rob tried out his Loola and Paul H took the RX to trim it as it hadn't been flown for well over a year, Rob then took it back but after a good few flights it managed to come together with the barbed wire fence and sustained a small dent in the carbon fibre LE.

Paul flew his Fireblade DLG and it flew very well, each flight was longer than the last , Paul was in the air for at least 15 minutes at a time.

After a while Paul went to the car park to get his Sapphire, but just before launching it was discovered that the battery was flat, so it had to go back in the car.

Overall we all had a good morning at the Beacon and although the wind did pick up a little, there was no opportunity to fly any other models which stayed in the cars.

Rob