The Penultimate meeting was finally upon us, not only did we have a perfect weather forecast but the event promised to be an exciting day as we could well see the last 2 team places filled for the world championship team next year. Also at this event if I could score well I would wrap up the UK 2009 F5D League title giving Team Overlander Cells pilots both the Nationals and League titles this year.

Sunday morning brough clear blue skies and light winds and by the time the course was put out I was down to a tee shirt wishing I had packed some shorts and sun block. The first models in the sky for the day was myself and Joe, I had worked on the Viper set up since the problems I had at the Nationals and she was going like a rocket now, Joe was using a borrowed Mega motor from myself that I had sorted out the day before so he was not hanging about either but unfortunately his model now has seen much better days so he was slipping behind my much faster model.

Next up came one of our new guys Tony who has his model going very well but every now and then seemed to be having problems in places where you would not expect it so appeared to be struggling. Olli was in the same heat with a very quick set up and needs a good score at this event to secure his team place.

Finally the heat I had been waiting for which is Darron and our National Champ  Ben Jones. Darron needs to fly steady today to keep his team place and one of his rivals is Ben. Ben straight from his  Nationals win is on a roll and was looking very purposeful so the pressure on Darron was massive.  Right from the drop of the flag it was obvious both had gone with fast set ups and were right on the ragged edge. There were lots or owws and arrs from the spectators as Ben pushed very hard very low and at the end Ben finished a fraction ahead but with 1 cut  so giving Darron the win. It appeared that Darron was coping with the strees well and his plane ticket to the States was nearly in his pocket.  

At the half way point it looked like Joe had blown his chances of a team place with a double cut and technical problems giving him 2 x 200, Tony had realised he was having glitches on his 35 meg radio in his faster model which explained his earlier problems I mentioned. Olli was ahead of Ben so looking good for the third team place. Darron was still keeping sub 70 so looking set for a 2nd place  today and securing his team place. Me well I had been chasing a sub 60 and hit a 59 but with a cut on 3 after it all got away from me so it was close but not  there yet, however I had ended up leading the event at the half way point so all was not bad. 

In the second session later that afternoon the temperature had risen to 25 in the shade and this took at least 2 second run time off the motors. I had now drawn Ben to fly against and Olli had drawn Joe with Darron flying with Tony.

At this point disaster struck Olli as he hit the ground coming out of pylon three. With no spare model poor Olli had to watch Ben fly each heat and start to eat into his advantage.

Tony swapped to a 2s Jibe1 and this solved the radio troubles but a lack of air speed kept his times slower than he would have liked but it was nice to see he was flying a good course which bodes well for the future.

Darron did slow slightly (this could have been tactical) but did enough to secure his 2^nd place in the UK team alongside me.

I kept chasing my sub 60 but although I can now get 7 or 8 of the 10 laps really fast I still find in every heat the model gets away from me once or twice meaning I run out of motor and end up gliding through the finish line costing me at least 5 seconds.

The day finished with me taking the win, Ben 2^nd and Darron 3^rd but the real news from the event is we will have to wait till the last event of 2009 to find out who will make that last team place, Olli or Ben?

I will be back in 2 weeks to let you all know.

Rob

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