Sunday 18th September saw quite a pleasant day weather wise, with slight wind and patchy sunshine. All races were comfortably flown 3-up. Dave Robinson appeared with a new pilot, Rob Leeman whose previous experience with his father, Pat, has been confined to mini and Brit Goodyear. Flying together for the first time ever and using an old Profi model with a dodgy tank, they seemed to gel and Rob finished the day looking forward to flying a lot more F2C.
The first round was uneventful with everyone simply settling down.
In the second round Langworth/Broadhead had a stopwatch malfunction when they clearly finished a lap or two after Fitzgerald/Thomason but the watch showed a 20 second difference. A re-run seemed only fair.
In round three Leeman/Robinson had a total fuel system failure after the warm-up had started but the two remaining teams failed to take proper advantage of the subsequent 2-up. Langworth/Broadhead landed short in the next race and fouled Walker/Peart, thus giving them a re-run.
Leeman/Robinson came into the re-run to gain some flying time and make a 3-up race, unfortunately running in and having to retire. Langworth/Broadhead made the most of the remaining 2-up race to record the fastest time of the day.
In the final FitzGerald/Thomason made a poor segment choice with the model catching in the tarmac, breaking a prop at the start and again at the second stop. I have to say that it was refreshing to see a contest end with a proper final rather than the time trials we seem to have had for years except at the Nats.
|
F2C |
Round 1 |
Round 2 |
Round 3 |
Re-run |
Final |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Langworth/Broadhead |
3:32.8 |
Re-run |
DQ |
3:18.7 |
6:55.5 |
|
Barker/North |
3:32.5 |
81L |
3:30.2 |
|
7:24.9 |
|
FitzGerald/Thomason |
3:30.0 |
3:27.7 |
3:24.8 |
|
68L |
|
Holmes/Robson |
3:40.0 |
3:39.5 |
4:12.4 |
|
|
|
Leeman/Robinson |
4:20.9 |
4:09.0 |
DNS |
29L |
|
|
Walker/Peart |
87L |
DQ |
Re-run |
4:52.0 |
|
1/2A T/R for the Budapest Trophy only had 3 entries with Walker/Peart failing to start with fuel system problems.
|
1/2A (Budapest Trophy) |
|
|
|
|
|
FitzGerald/Thomason |
7:42.0 |
|
Barker/North |
118L |
|
Walker/Peart |
DNS |
Class B T/R was very much a tortoise and hare event with two 2-up finals. The piped OPS .29 of FitzGerald/Thomason was clearly the fastest model but for this year was very erratic with poor starts.
|
B (ETA Trophy) |
|
|
|
|
|
Walker/Peart |
9:10.2 |
|
Whitehouse/Watson |
9:46.9 |
|
Langworth/Broadhead |
10:12.2 |
|
FitzGerald/Thomason |
11:24.5 |
Overall, a friendly contest, flown in pretty good weather. Thanks must go to Ken Long of “Tigress” fame who timed every round and all three finals.
Thanks to Paul MkPeake for supplying this report !