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.

Sunday morning did break with torrential rain and floods in some areas however unusually at Barkston Heath all the rain passed through in the night and at day break the sky’s cleared and strangely for a July weekend the sun came out. By the time we had set out the course the wind was racing across the airfield strong enough to ground most R/C disciplines however us Pylon lot consider anything under gale force 7 a mere breeze so the pilots briefing was called at 10:30.

Due to the increasing numbers in F5D we now shared our half with Q500 and the F3D have the other half so we can marshal the course for each other, unfortunately there were a few no-shows in both camps (probably due to those stupid weather men) which meant we lost a few heats so turnaround times was rather rushed but everyone managed very well.

The 2 new lads Olli and Joe both were at the previous day’s practice meeting and had benefitted from Paul Bardoe & Mark Vandervelden’s mobile spares stores so were ready to go with no mechanical problems, unfortunately Ben Jones putting in his first showing at F5D did not finish building it until the early hours the night before so when he arrived he was testing in the first round, unfortunately his new Hacker motor was not happy at all and was drawing far too many amps for the set up and cut after 5 laps, we tried an even smaller prop but clearly there was a problem. Fortunately I carry a few spares so between Mark, Paul, Barrie and team Jones my Mega and controller were fitted to Bens Demon which was back at the start line in 15 mins….. however due to the rush everyone had forgotten that Mega’s are 30 g lighter than Hackers so Ben’s next flight had a C G 1/2 inch behind its normal place. I have no idea how he flew it but he did and got his first recorded F5D time. By the last round I think it’s fair to say Ben got on top of the Demon and then showed me that what my slow spare motor can do and set the fastest time of the day (I hate him!!!!!)

As far as the racing went the very strong winds made the turn round 2 and 3 very tricky, even the F3D models which are twice as heavy were being thrown around and everyone was at least 5 seconds down on their normal times. The best battles in the sky were between Olli and Joe, on this occasion Joe experience racing IC since he was a junior paid off and he got the better of Olli however as Olli set a new British time under the Limiter Rules at the last event in calmer conditions, something tells me there is a lot of good racing to come between these boys in the future.

We also had the return of another new face Tony Wilson who has a couple of Jibe 1 models. 1 is powered by a 2s set up to keep the power down and the second is a hotter 5s set up with a Mega in it capable of very quick times when he lets her go. Tony towards the end of the day was getting on top of the difficult conditions and putting in some very good times and finished a creditable 4th.

Darron brought out his D05 model in the afternoon and is getting that set up going well. The model really does look good in the air and it will be interesting to see how it goes against the now rather dominant Demon that Overlander are importing.

These are the final results and times. 

Talking of new models I will have the first Viper to be imported to the UK in a few weeks and will do a build log on the web site, I hope Darron will find the time to do the same so we can compare them. I guess the real challenge will be at the Nationals as it’s a 3 day event to see which goes the best.

Set ups - it’s a mixed bag now and with 8 people having flown this season already and perhaps a few more at the Nats it’s good for the UK to have people experimenting. The Demon has proved itself as a strong fast plane in either the aileron only or flapped version. My Flapped Version is in its 3rd season with 100’s of high G turns under its belt and touch wood is still going strong. The new versions are slightly heavier and stronger as I carry lead to get up to the minimum weight which is silly. I still used my trusty Neu 1112/1,5y motor although I have faster set ups I know I have good speed and 70 seconds of run time with this motor so why risk finishing on the glide? The Overlander Extreme Cells are still pumping out the power and they now have had 24 cycles at races and according to my log book have another 22 cycles at practice and also 15 cycles in other models (F16 EDF) so they are also going well

The Hacker 11L in Ollis Demon is probably the fastest in the League but at 62- 64 second run time does not leave him much room for error which is why he finished on the glide quite a few times during the day.

Joe used a borrowed Mega 16/30/2 and ran larger props which sounded slow compared to Ollis but in the air was not far behind on speed. Joe also used one of my Old Barbie Jibes which has seen much better days so his total race price was less than £300 in the air and he is now competing for a team place in the World Champs so guess that’s living proof F5D is cheap compared to other FAI classes.

Team Trial Scores

Roll on the Nationals.