Dartford F2C Centralised Event - July 4th 1999

This was the last domestic meeting before the team were due to head out to Spain for the 1999 European Championships and therefore an important testing session for the team members. The weather had been rather dodgy all week, with Wimbledon being rained off 50% of the time, but in the end we were lucky and had a warm, dry day with a fairly constant breeze.

The site, which is an overflow bus and coach park for the Lakeside Shopping Centre had been available to us for three years without any problems but this year had seen a number of problems develop. To start with we are no longer allowed to take our vehicles on site which means we have to unload the equipment at the gate and then deposit the cars in the local Safeway's supermarket. There are also a number of "sand mountains" at one end of the ground which create a lot of muck when the wind is in the wrong direction. During the day we also had visitations from security staff and at one point looked like having to pack our kit away again but in the end all was sorted and we were able to have a good days racing. We just have to hope that we do not lose this venue as it is the only south east site we have and enables us to spread the domestic events around the country fairly evenly but the fact that houses are appearing all around the site makes me believe that our problems here are likely to grow. Another problem is that circle placement is getting more difficult due to the sand problem and we ended up with only two good, smooth pit positions and a choice of forward or rearward slots on rather rough surfaces.

Racing started at around 11:30 and the event was run to our usual 4 heat pattern. During the rounds we saw two of our "team teams" go inside 3:20 - Ross Turner with a 3:18.8 and Langworth/Campbell with a 3:19.2 the latter team benefiting from what turned out to be in effect a two up race due to problems encountered by Barker/Tomkins. Smith Brown are still working hard to sort out their new Mazniak gear and put in a 3:24.5 - the equipment giving good airspeed but intermittent starting problems being the limiting factor at this time.

There was some criticism during the day that we are getting a bit lax on the control side and letting flyers get away with a bit too much. In at least three cases times were recorded with flyers hanging on to models in a way that would have had them "bombed out" within 10 laps at internationals and a number of flyers commented on this fact as it both allows the one team to record a time when they would not have done legally and also prevents other teams performing to their ability. Perhaps the best example of this was when Tribe/Bollen flew against Fitzgerald/Thomason - Ron Tribe pulled all the way and was all over the sky, recorded a 3:33 (which would not have been the case with legal flying) and as a result of being blocked throughout the race Mike Fitzgerald recorded a 3:32.4 (despite what in all other aspects was a perfect race). In the next round, with exactly the same setting and another identical performance, Fitzgerald/Thomason recorded a 3:29.1 which just shows the affect Ronny Tribe had had on the first race. It does seem sometimes as if we use the warning system just to tell flyers to behave themselves but are scared to use the disqualification to ensure that they do. Again this results in our teams having problems at internationals where jurying is far more strict - "please can we jury races fairly to keep a constant standard ?"

The most amusing occurrence of the day was when Heaton/Broadhead were flying in the second round. In the race were two identical Ukranian Mazniak models and as Derek Heaton landed for their second stop John focussed his catching attention on the wrong model and totally ignored his own model as it rolled by. (A bit red faced !)

Our thanks go to Dave Rudd for running the racing on the day and to Gordon Yeldham for arranging the site availability and sorting out the growing number of problems with the security staff.

League Points awarded for the day were as follows :-