The Club’s Spring competition were finally blessed with some nice weather after being postponed from April. The calm wind and beautiful warm May sunshine saw about 12 members enjoy the conditions with 5 classes run to cater for varied tastes.
The competition got under way at 9:30 sharp with sound of Gary’s authentic police whistle, luckily we weren’t invaded by the police eager to answer the call. The relaxed nature of the competition was very welcome thanks to the organising skills of CD Gary Law.
The wind steadily increased through the morning so by the time the competition had finished at around lunchtime we a fairly steady 10 mph. Most had flown early on and got their times in the calmer air
In the P30 class Bill Dennis’s Teacher’s Pet showed the consistency for 3 maxes, though retrieval became more and more of a hike as the wind speed increased. Andy Blackburn’s Sweet P30 also covered some distance for it’s max heading for the river, luckily it landing just few feet short saving Andy from an impromptu morning swim
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | Total | Position |
| Bill Dennis | Teacher’s Pet | 90 max | 90 max | 90 max | 270 | 1 |
| Andy Blackburn | Sweet P30 | 86 | 82 | 90 max | 258 | 2 |
| Andrew Longhurst | O/D | 90 max | 90 max | —– | 180 | 3 |
| Jim Paton | O/D | 40 | 59 | —– | 99 | 4 |
In the Kit Scale class Andy Blackburn’s KK Stinson proved that small models can do well in the competition thanks to a bonus system design to compensate the older and smaller designs. That said 51s is very good for the class though not quite a match in pure duration terms to Andrew Longhurst much larger Comper Swift.
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | Total | Bonus | total | Position |
| Andy Blackburn | KK Stinson | 51s | 41s | 46 | 151 | 55 | 206 | 1 |
| Andrew Longhurst | Comper Swift | 39 | 60 max | 60 max | 159 | 0 | 159 | 2 |
| Chris Brainwood | Piper SC | 20 | 16 | 26 | 62 | 65 | 127 | 3 |
| Bill Dennis | Stinson | 57 | 41 | 26 | 124 | 0 | 124 | 4 |
The Hi-Start glider class was the most popular of the day with a Peterborough rules bungee provided for launching. The class sort of unofficially saw itself split into duration models and scale designs. On the day Andrew Longhurst and Alan Trinder tied for 1st while Simon Roger’s new Schweizer from the Volare kit floated it’s way 4th and best of the scale designs. Later checking revealed an error in the max time so in the final results Alan Trinder wins the class . Having been trimming in calmer both myself and Gary found our models tended to come off the line a bit too soon
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | total | Position |
| Alan Trinder | KK Dolphin | 30 | 28 | 72 | 130 | 1 |
| Andrew Longhurst | Tops | 40 | 60 max | —– | 100 | 2 |
| Gary Law | CK DAB | 40 | 20 | 39 | 99 | 3 |
| Simon Rogers | Schweizer | 21 | 25 | 36 | 82 | 4 |
| Chris Brainwood | Airspeed Tern | 22 | 17 | 26 | 65 | 5 |
| Bill Dennis | Schweizer | 24 | 14 | 20 | 58 | 6 |
Gary Law won the FROG Senior and proves that it’s always worth getting 3 timed flights
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | total | Position |
| Gary Law | Redwing | 22 | 34 | 49 | 105 | 1 |
| Andy Blackburn | Linnet | 57 | 46 | —– | 103 | 2 |
| Simon Rogers | Linnet | 28 | —– | —– | 28 | 3 |
In the E20 class Alan Trinder was the winner with a fantastic first flight
| Name | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | total | Position |
| Alan Trinder | 60 Max | 12 | 15 | 87 | 1 |
| Gary Law | 19 | 28 | 30 | 77 | 2 |