SLOPING OFF...
...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for...December 2024
From Switzerland on tour.
Win Green flying sessions on 10th & 11th of June 2024
by David Bicker
Perfect conditions, with a NNW wind of around 14mph gusting to 18mph, with sunny intervals throughout the day. Andrew S and myself were the only flyers on the slope at the start of the day. Lift was excellent, with small thermals were coming through on a regular basis.
Andrew flew his Elipse and a Zagi. I flew my Zagi, the yellow pre-DLG V-Tail, Sea Fury PSS and Sweet 1.8.
Basically, anything that was launched flew well that day. We got some great shots and videos of the planes that are included in this article. There are links to videos taken.
I got in my 3rd flight with my Sea Fury, which was a bit twitchy, but looks great once you get a bit of speed up. Andrew enjoyed some areos with his Elipse. It was the sort of day where you could fly half way down the bowl , leave the plane to its own devices and it would rise above the horizon and continue skywards. So plenty of fun with the Zagis and room to experiment and to sort out trimming models in the air. Landing was a challenge, with me, for example going around again about 10 times with the yellow V-Tail before landing it as I couldn’t scrub off the speed. Not a single bad landing between us, or any damaged models. I got my repaired Sweet 1.8 (see August 2023 article ”Knowle Hill Black Hole” article to see why it was repaired) to fly hands-off again after a bit of trimming and started to enjoy flying it again.
Mid-morning one of the old air cooled V-Dub campervans pulled up alongside us and Marcel (from Switzerland) introduced himself. His V-Dub campervan was packed with RC slope soarers.
Marcel & campervan
Marcel has been touring the UK flying at a variety of slopes around the country & just happened to roll up while Andrew & I were at Win Green. He flew using a Jeti DC-16 “tea tray” TX. (Think Monty Python sketch in the cinema with usherette selling “Albatross” from an ice cream tray)…
Marcel & Dave B with TXs
The models that he flew were a Europhia and a Minius, plus a Tempest from TJIRC and an old Multiplex ASW 27 on the second day. He also had an Alpina with Styro/Balsa wings in the campervan.
Talking to Marcel, it was interesting to learn that flying in Switzerland has its own problems because it's mostly mountainous with a lot of forest covered mountain slopes preventing land-outs. So electric power assisted slope soarers are popular in his home country.
He has his own model build and fly website on the following Google translated website link:
https://oszillator-ch.translate.goog/blog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Here’s 2 pictures from the website (with permission)
Marcel with his Mistral 4.3m
F5 Swiss flight
Worth a visit as it’s full of slope & PSS builds and pictures of some pretty adventurous launching sites!
He loved standing behind the bowl just soaking up the view as he said that, at home, if it wasn't steep mountains it was fairly flat farmland, not the undulating hills with extensive views that he's enjoying in England. He planned to walk up to the Trig point by the clump of trees on Win Green to work out how far and what he could see from there.
Previously Marcel and a friend went for a week's flying, based from the campervan but found it difficult for storage of 2 people's slope soarers. He had a roof box for the wings but said that when they wanted to turn in, they had long fuselages (too big for the wing box) that spanned from the front of the passenger footwell, all the way to the headlining on the other side of the driver's cab! That kept the living area clear to eat & sleep in.
I suggested that, if the tail sections were detachable, he could store them in plumbing drainpipes with end caps, fitted on the roof rack either side of the wing storage roof box.
Marcel has explored Scotland & is planning to revisit Wales in his extended stay in the UK, probably to Rhosilli in the Gower Peninsular.
On the second day, as well as Marcel, Nick F, Andrew S, Barry Hawkins & Jim from Burton arrived. The wind was again around 15 MPH NNW and conditions were ideal again. – Enough so to convince Nick to try out his massive Canberra sloper, which flew well. In fact Nick said that if flew much better that his Vulcan did the previous week.
The Canberra
Video of the Canberra, and several of the other models flown over these two days have been posted on the club’s Whatsapp message groups.
David Bicker