The Autumn Duration Competitions and Fun Fly were blessed with some lovely calm weather, perfect for long flights and short retrievals but was also predicted to be the hottest day of the year with temperatures in the 30C ‘s. A decision was made to start early at 8:15am before it got too hot and finish earlier at 11:15am. Around 17 flyers took advantage of the cool and calm conditions to fly in the 4 classes
The most popular class was for Coupe d’Hiver. These are rubber powered duration models built to a min weight of 70g and allowed 10g of rubber to power them.
There’s more information about Coupes in the Postal comp section as we are running a postal for them at the moment combined with P30 models
A max was set at 90 seconds with anything over 10s counting as an attempt. The conditions were pretty ideal with some lift around so some lovely flights were made by all. There’s not much of a nicer sight in aeromodelling than Coupe’s gently floating around above you in the warm air. Andy Crisp’s OD Coupe was floating around rather too well and after the DT failed was last seen high above the meadow .
Three flyers managed 3 maxes so a fly off was flown in which Richard Fryer won out with his FK1 over Andrew Longhurst and his Couper S. Bill Dennis took the third spot with his Les Trumeaux
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | Total | Fly Off | Position |
| Richard Fryer | FK1 Coupe | 2’00” max | 1’48” max | 1’57” max | max | 3’38” | 1 |
| Andrew Longhurst | Couper S | 1’48” max | 1’50” max | 1’49” max | max | 3’02” | 2 |
| Bill Dennis | Les Trumeaux | 1’43” max | 1’40” max | 1’30” max | max | 42” | 3 |
| Jim Paton | Burin | 1’16 | 1’30 max | 1’30” max | 256 | 4 | |
| Andrew Crisp | OD | 3’03” max | 1’02” | OOS max | 252 | 5 | |
| Chris Brainwood | Etienvre | 58” | 1’12” | 1’50” max | 220 | 6 | |
| Ben Hobbs | OD | 36” | 1’40” max | 2’10” max | 216 | 7 | |
| Gary Law | Etienvre | 23” | 23 | 8 |
Kit Scale saw 6 models competing with a variety of different types from Andrew Longhurst’s enlarged Comper Swift to Chris Brainwood’s traditional KK kit 18″ Piper Super Cruiser.
It was flown to a 60s max over 3 rounds
David Kings Chambermaid put in some lovely flights but neither it or Andy Blackburn’s KK Stinson Flying Station Wagon could beat Andrew Longhurst’s big Comper Swift for out right duration. The Comper flies remarkably like a cabin duration model and looks very stately in the air. The unique nature of this competition though, is that it has a bonus system to level the playing field. Bonuses applied saw Andy’s Stinson come out on top followed by the Comper Swift of Andrew Longhurst and the Chambermaid of David King
Andy Blackburn’s OD BA Eagle ( now available as plan in July 2023 Aeromodeller ) was going particularly well with 3 maxes, quite remarkable for a small low wing model . As it wasn’t a kit it was in the Open Class but unfortunately it was the only entry
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | Total | Bonus | total | Position |
| Andy Blackburn | KK Stinson | 54s | 43s | 51 | 148 | 70 | 218 | 1 |
| Andrew Longhurst | Comper Swift | max | max | max | 180 | 0 | 180 | 2 |
| David King | Chambermaid | 55s | 37s | 35s | 127 | 30 | 157 | 3 |
| Chris Brainwood | KK Piper SC | 25s | 23 | 31 | 79 | 50 | 129 | 4 |
| Bob Lee | AOP9 | 39 | 39 | 0 | 39 | 5 | ||
| Open Class | ||||||||
| Andy Blackburn | BA Eagle | max | max | max | 180 | 30 | 210 | |
The FROG Senior duration was well supported and became a battle of the Redwings versus the Linnets. Interesting data for anyone thinking of building a FROG Senior for next years competitions.
The competition proved quite close with just 10s after three flights separating 1st from 3rd. In the end, despite a concerted effort from the Linnet’s David King’s Redwing won out by just 6 secs overall over Simon Milan’s Linnet.
Kudos to Simon Rogers who as well as flying his Linnet in the competition, brought along the full range of FROG Seniors. Simon had both a Heron built from the Outerzone plan and a Heron from the new VMC Kit. The Kit version is some 10g heavier than the one he built using his own wood
| Name | Model | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | total | Position |
| David King | Redwing | 38s | 36s | 57s | 131 | 1 |
| Simon Milan | Linnet | 54s | 36s | 35s | 125 | 2 |
| Andy Blackburn | Linnet | 44s | 44s | 33s | 121 | 3 |
| Simon Rogers | Linnet | 39s | 14s | 51s | 104 | 4 |
| David Lovegrove | Redwing | 25s | 26s | 33s | 84 | 5 |
| Steve Edwards | Redwing | 19s | 29s | 28s | 76 | 6 |
The VMC Pilot was the club’s group build for 2023 with many members tackling one over the winter. A Postal duration competition was run over the summer for them (more details here) and in addition a class was added to the Autumn Duration Competition.
The duration competition was flown to a 60s max but no one got close to that. Chris Brainwood showed they way with 3 flights over 40’s with Gary Law not far behind.
| Name | Flight 1 | Flight 2 | Flight 3 | total | Position |
| Chris Brainwood | 44s | 50s | 42s | 137 | 1 |
| Gary Law | 26s | 33s | 38s | 97 | 2 |
| Andrew Longhurst | 42s | – | – | 42 | 3 |