For this year's event there were no flyers from other clubs and only seven stalwart members turned out for what seemed to be a not very promising day.
The flying field to the east of New Milton was by courtesy of Mr. Pottle and as usual had been arranged by John Cheesman. Thanks to both of them. There was literally acres of flat flying space and the models did not appear to suffer from the stubble.
Only one bungee was deemed to be necessary as the flyers had
one hour to get in a qualifying flight of up to 5 minutes, followed
by more rounds of 6, 7 and 8 minute maximums. A small landing
bonus was available to reward the more competent (lucky?) ones.
Round one saw John Cheesman with his vintage 'Cirrel' putting up a good performance as usual but the clear leader was Jack Rabbetts with his equally vintage 'Gentle Lady'. Best landing marks went to Clive Spencer. Round two put John well in the lead by 29 seconds, with Allan Parker flying his Algebra into second, despite failing to gain any bonuses for landings. In this round John and Brian Brockway both made perfect landings.
The third round saw John really come on form with a maximum of 7 minutes and only losing one second on landing. Jim Ruffell was the only one this time to get full bonus time for his landing. Brian now moved into second place despite no landing bonus.
By now the weather was beginning to deteriorate with everyone taking advantage of the shelter offered by Trevor's gazebo.
Unfortunately the fourth round was cancelled because of persistent rain. I felt it had been a good competition as there was some close flying as the results show. Perhaps some people's landings could be better, but bear in mind most of the flyers had dusted off their models for this one annual outing.
A very clear and worthy winner was John Cheesman yet again. Second was Brian with a string of steady flights with his ancient Vortex and third was Jim with his equally ancient Sunrise. I was told later that both Brian and Jim had decided not to fly their 'plastics' for fear of being beaten by John! A wise decision.