August Bank holiday weekend, a weekend that marks the end of the summer and for many thousands of modellers marks a weekend to pack wet and windy weather gear in their cars/caravans & campers and head to Barkston Heath and compete at the British Model Flying Associations National Championships.

The BMFA Nats is the annual event of the year for all Control Line, Remote Control and some of the Free flight modellers to meet fly and talk model aeroplanes together and have a beer at the bar. On that subject whilst doing some research interviewing the Bar Manager he revealed they get up to pulling as many as 14 pints a min at peak times on Saturday and Sunday evenings now that is some serious beer drinking. Sorry back to the flying, each discipline has its annual championships over the weekend and the BMFA Reps are kept very busy driving round with the rostrum awarding Trophies to the new Champions.

The weekend of the 11th & 12th of July held the 6th planned UK F5D league event, I said planned as due to the good old British weather its only the 4th actual event and if we believed the weather people this event would also be a write off.  However, fortunately most of us ignored the gale and torrential rain warnings and headed for Barkston Heath for our Saturday practice anyway.

We must take this opportunity of thanking the local club for letting us on their site for the weekend as it must be one of this country’s best flying sites as anyone that goes to the Nationals will testify.

Saturday the 27th June saw the first “Festival of Electric Speed” at the Middle Wallop Army Corps base.

What started as a mad scramble to find flying sites for the F5D league because of the loss of use of RAF Cottesmore, ended up being the first ever UK RC Speed Event. It was also the last official BEFA event, so it was very apt that they invited F5D back for a reunion party (F5D was first flown in the UK under the BEFA before F5D moved to the BMPRA).