The 3rd and 4th of July saw the 2nd Festival of Electrric Speed organised by the UK F5D A at the Middle Wallop Army Air Corps. Where we saw speeds up to 425kph!!!
This year saw international attendance in the form of serious F5S speedster, Michael Jakob from Germany flying his Eagle with 10kW+. The Saturday was spent with the speedsters practicing and the organisers fine tuning the electronic timing equipment. On Sunday, the weather had taken a turn for the worst with gusts up to 40mph. This didn't seem to bother the speedsters and was more of a problem for us, the organisers, as we had to battern down everything to stop pylons from falling over and gazibos from taking flight. In the end the electronic system worked well and the results were as follows:
The BMPRA were lucky enough to have a stand and some flying slots, so we put both an F5D and F3D model up at the same time to entertain the crowds.
I think that out of a dive F5D is significantly faster, but doing the short laps they were about the same, which if you consider how the tuned pipes and electric motors work makes some sense.
FAI F5D is the international class for remote controlled electric powered pylon racing model aircraft.
We race these models round a 400 metre triangular course at speeds close to 200mph for 10 laps. It now only takes the top pilots less than 60 seconds to complete the course which is as fast as our "wet" fueled relatives.
