Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
Sloping Off - our newsletter

editorial

It is now coming up to one year since we received Planning Consent for Strawberry Field. Soon afterwards I made some harsh comments about the lack of flying discipline which if it had continued, would have caused some serious accidents and put our use of the field at risk.

Since then various key members have spent a lot of time and effort improving the situation and now it is a pleasure to drive over, park up, book in and get to the pits, where everyone knows the score. The simplicity of laying out a rope to act as the flight line has had the desired effect of keeping pilots in one place and separating the security of the pits from the potential dangers of spinning props and fast-moving models.

It is sometimes difficult to fly tidily, particularly when the wind is coming from behind us. Taking off can be a real problem in these conditions as you can’t stand behind the model - but taxying out, turning round and getting into the air is a challenge that must be met...unless you are confident enough to take off downwind.

The best wind directions are when it blows down (or up!) the field when the long take-off and landing runs give the most pleasure. The bumpy westerly direction, when there is a awkward rotor off the fir trees, can be less fun and when in the landing circuit it is very difficult to avoid flying over the field behind the flight line before making that last turn into wind.

But the field is a wonderful asset and we have our committee to thank for that. The endless planning negotiations must have been a nightmare...dealing with a reluctant and recalcitrant club member who insisted his way was right another...negotiating with the neighbour on the left cannot have been easy, and with the (rather more friendly) one on the right, the one with the horses equally tricky. It would not take much for an opposition to emerge.

Things do go wrong occasionally. I know this as much as anyone, having lost my HK Skipper into the field beyond the firs due to disorientation and over the last few years a total of 4 models have variously been destroyed, badly damaged or merely slightly inconvenienced, almost always due to some fault I should have spotted five minutes earlier. I’ve seen other pilots’ planes fly over the road, into trees, into adjacent fields. **it happens. Just take care!

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