Editor's Notes

A few very important announcements:

Owing to the Winter Field at Cobham being in the Foot & Mouth protection zone we need to continue at the Summer Field in Ditches Lane - probably until at least 6^th October. Check the website for confirmation of the date we will return to Winter Field or, if you don't have web access, ring one of the committee to check which field we will be at.

At least, unlike most clubs who have been impacted by Foot & Mouth, we do have the luxury of a second field we can continue to use. There is livestock on part of the farm we use in the winter (something I hadn't realised). If anyone has travelled from anywhere near the Foot & Mouth exclusion Zone they may bring the disease with them. Clearly we do not want to be responsible for any risk of spreading this disease so we will need to remain away until the all clear is given.

The Fly-in and BBQ are also cancelled, as we really don’t want to hold it at Ditches Lane.

On the subject of the website you may have noticed that this hasn’t been updated for some time. This is because I had a major, and difficult to fix, PC crash which resulted in me losing a lot of data (it was backed up but the backup drive was connected to the PC and the wonderful Windows XP installation programme deleted the directories off of the backup as well - a hard lesson learned!!!!)

This means that I've lost some home addresses, and all my email addresses so, if you haven't done so already in September, please email me (k.england@virgin.net) with your email address and name so I can inform you quickly if we have a problem. For example, if you did not receive an email telling you flying was cancelled on 22^nd September, I do not have your email address!

Diary

29/09- Sat We remain at Summer Flying Field until further notice.

30/09- Sun Fly-in & BBQ at Winter Field cancelled due to the above.

14/11-Wed AGM.

01/12-Sat Christmas Dinner.

27/12-Thu Annual Xmas Slope Soaring Day. Meet at Alan’s (address above) at 8:30a.m. or ring for details of slope.

AGM Wednesday 14th November

This will be held at 7.45 sharp. Please try to be there.

Very Important

As reported this time last year, Tony Major will not be standing as Chairman for 2008. We must therefore have a new Chairman so please think very carefully about this. It is time that more people put a little back into the club or it is going to slowly wither and die.

Dave Hodges, after nearly 40 years in the Club, also wishes to stand down as Treasurer. He has given notice that he will stand for 2008 as long as someone will deputise to him and 'learn the ropes' ready to take over as Treasurer for 2009.

Neither of these jobs are very onerous so please consider seriously if you can help. Why not talk to Tony and/or Dave and find out just what is involved?

AGM Agenda

Southern Model Airshow

The annual Croydon Airport Model Flying Club show at the Hop Farm in Kent on 15^{th -} 16^th September has rapidly become a firm fixture in the calendar with a good selection of traders, excellent displays and, if you can convince them to come, something for the whole family. Entrance includes the attractions of the Hop Farm itself which is a museum, petting farm etc and a number of other modelling interests including this year: cars, tanks  (small and large) boats, a selection of full size vintage and kit cars plus a whole army of Daleks, K9 and Dr Who's car!

The BMFA Safety Marshalls got a lot more respect this year than they usually do!

With a long grass runway, fortunately  correctly orientated for the quite strong winds on Sunday everything from WW1 to fast jets were able to fly OK, indeed the only real problem  I had with the show was that late August and September have been very dry and the winds continually blew up quite awful dust clouds. I feared for my camera most of the time and didn't dare change lenses!

Jets were much in evidence and one, I believe flown by Ali Machinchy, was doing 3 foot high to dot in the sky loops at what had to be 250MPH+. Not surprisingly I didn’t manage to catch a photo and I’m not at all sure the crowd line was anywhere near far enough away for those sorts of speeds!

Al's Hobbies also put up a formation display with a Cessna 525 Citation Jet and a Red Arrows Hawk. Strangely enough the Citation, despite twin gas turbine engines, flew at a well below scale speed and the poor Hawk had to fly as dirty as possible with flaps and spoilers deployed to slow it down enough.

The Citation and Hawk in formation.

Three of our members were involved in the show: Tony Major, assisted by Tony Fuller, had his Toffee Bomber out, full of toffees. In fact as it turned out too full of toffees! While sitting on the ground awaiting his slot the toffees suddenly departed all by themselves. The weight of them had broken the bomb door servo arm! That left two other toffee bombers for the slot, one of which suddenly dived vertically into the ground scattering toffee's everywhere. Certainly the first kamikaze toffee bomber I've ever seen!

No show would be complete without blowing things up and Mark Stonard is our resident expert at that.

Mark with much needed hard hat!

This year he was sponsored to blow things up on both days so, while the fun fighter team screamed over the top of his model village Mark spectacularly blew up the buildings and let off fireworks that served well as anti aircraft rockets and flak. He was quite successful too - I saw a fast flying yellow P51 Mustang suddenly spin vertically at an astonishing rate before flopping to the ground - turned out that Mark had blown its tail clean off!

A Fun-flyer pushes its luck!

Two full size displays were also put on. A pair of Extra 300's put on a superb formation display,

Even more astonishing was Dennis Kenyon flying a Schweizer 269C helicopter and doing things I thought that only model helicopters could do. I don’t think he went above 100 feet at any point and had it doing everything from stall turns to pirouetting on one skid tip - photo's just don't do it justice!

Dennis Kenyon's Heli in a spirited display!

 A Wellington also managed to get its own back on Mark.

Wellington Gets it's own back on Mark!