2011 Competition Reports and Results

ESSA Aerobatic 1st May- Butts Brow East Bowl

So, the East Bowl as Butts Lane, sunny, 20mph steady breeze... Then I woke up!

Well in reality it was so good for a competition I didn't bother waiting in the car park for fellow competitors and sent Ollie off for a jaunt to chase Dave Cox who was a couple of minutes ahead of me. Yes, conditions were so good I didn't want to wait and chew the cud with my fellow ESSA members (well wait for them to turn up first and then chew the cud)!

We have kept this format for the aero competition a few years now and I genuinely think that the stability of the rules benefit all (actually I think Bernie Ecclestone has had the same idea at some stage). Perhaps we should add a yearly guest manoeuvre (over to Allen for that, maybe 2012 could have an inverted circle?).

Rant over, we had a really good turn out for the comp, 8 competitors (7 from ESSA and 1 guest). Tom turned up but due to partying too hard the night before was not in a fit state and John P was in Wales practising for the Welsh Open (even though he told me it was a social visit)....

The standard is genuinely improving with each discipline getting better as the years pass, most people even understand what a double humpty bumpty is now!

Congratulations to our guest Pete Burgess who showed us all how it should be done with his Vector III, second was Cam Tate with one of his great self developed models and  I limped over the post in third (although it was only my second outing with my F3F Extreme (excuse over!)).

If only we could have this sort of weather for all comps life would be sweet!

Excel spreadsheet available - click here

Images of the day click here

Report by Julian Perrott

Report on Summer Fun Fly - Sunday 26 June 2011

This annual fun event took place on the SW slope at Long Man in warm weather but with patchy lift conditions. Eight members turned up and that included three recent members, Phil Tobin, Ian Mason and Rob Wood.

We added two new elements this year. Firstly, touch and goes in a minute and secondly, how long can you fly hands off for. Two members managed to score on touch and go but no one could do 15 seconds hands off, and certainly not 30 seconds, so maybe we need to revisit the scoring on this, subject to lift on the day.

The contest was won by Phil Tobin with 38 points. Well done Phil.
Tom came second with 36 and Jim third with 28. Runners up were Ian Mason, Terry Parris, Colin Lennox, Rob Wood and Ray Wells.

On this occasion the contest was run by Ray Wells who was ably supported by his 6 year old grandson, Sam, who felt very important carrying the clip board, writing down the scores and listening to Jim’s jokes.

Let’s see if we can get more members out for the next fun fly or, indeed, any contest.

Report by Ray Wells

ESSA F3F 4th September-Longman SW Bowl

After a very questionable forecast and a very light shower before we started the weather held off for nearly the entire competition.

Allen Elliott was CD and although the pilots briefing was a little more than terrible the F3F ran pretty smoothly.

The lift was not the best and the air was quite turbulent as the wind picked up during the day the lift did not seem to improve, only the turbulence seem to increase.

On the last run of the last round the rain crept in and most of us got soaked walking down the hill.

Excel spreadsheet available - click here

Reported by Allen Elliott

ESSA Cross Country Comp 18th Sepember (Longman SW Bowl)

Well the forecast of strong winds soon became light winds and the west direction was more like SW-SSW

As it was the worst bowl for the club XC, the flags were set as best as possible to make an interesting comp.

The comp was kicked off by Phil completing the entire course without fault, leaving me thinking I had made the cause to easy and everyone would end up joint first, this did not turn out to be the case, in fact just staying up long enough to get round most of the course seemed to be almost impossible.

Somehow we dodged the rain and had a dry day and as expected in all cross country events the lift was awful.

Reported by Allen Elliott