Monday 19 May 2014

Eastbourne F3F Eurotour 10 & 11 May


A memorable weekend in many ways.


I was at Peter's house for 8 am Friday morning and off we set hoping for an easy journey but an accident on the M6 saw us change to the other side of the country and head down the M1. A detour that I am sure worked out well but when we got to the M25 we were jammed up in the Friday evening traffic. Took us over 11 hours to get to the hotel in Eastbourne. Our return journey on Sunday took less than 9 hours! Thanks must go to Peter doing ALL the driving. Mind you, he had to put up with me prattling away for both journeys. A kin talk rubbish fur Scotland ye ken!!

The compensation was a great curry and a few beers with some of the other guys there for the competition.

Saturday was a hard day with winds strong enough to question the accuracy of the wind meter. That and our sanity!

I only have phone pictures because my camera seems to have died.
In the trench out of the wind. Flightline is out of the picture to the left. Landing is on that small flat area to the extreme left of the people in the distance. Flying behind the slope does not work!! No way back but to land out.
On the flightline it felt above the maximum limit all day. I had to scratch from the last round on day one when, after having trouble actually standing up in the wind, I questioned the windspeed. In the ensuing delay the left aileron on my Extreme got a belt and knocked the servo loose. Application of medium cyano soon fixed that although that servo is now permanently glued to the servo mount and to the wing. Oops! If it ever needs replacing it will take some Dremel action to get it out!
Peter chasing his wing bags down the back of the hill! Apparently he got a great view of the "Long Man" from there!
A lot of time was spent on Saturday trying, vainly, to keep stuff blowing away. The site is very exposed. 

Watching the action


On the course
Late afternoon there was a long halt caused by an ambulance having to rescue a walker from farther up the hill. Day one over we headed back to the hotel for a game of bingo (ha ha) before heading out for another superb curry.

Sunday
Birthday boy :-)
Sunday saw the wind direction change and a move round the hill to a slope that suits the westerly wind. Thankfully the wind had dropped to about 30mph and was much less wild.

Waiting their turn to fly

I was reasonably happy with my result and felt I coped with the heavy conditions pretty well although I now have some tungsten ballast on order for my Pike!

Thanks again to Peter for doing all the driving.



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