Christmas Slope Soaring

December 27th 2007

My thanks to Paul Silcox and Fred Clarke for the pictures shown here.

December 27 2007 turned out to be unseasonably warm - around 14°C - with a good West, South Westerly breeze of around 15MPH. Although there was lots of low cloud there was no threat of rain.
So, why on earth did only 6 people turn up for the day! For those of us who did though it was a great day.

As Tony demonstrates here: It was a lovely warm day for December!

Wind direction was just about OK for Colley Hill so we arranged to meet there and quickly came to the solution that the hump at the west end of the slope would give the best lift.

5 of us were soon up and gliding around but Paul managed to struggle with his elderly Zagi and finally broke the control clevis.

Fortunately, I always bring two transmitters on different frequencies and several 'planes so Paul was soon airborne with my old Zagi - Only the covering is holding it together but it still flies surprisingly well!

Alan quickly launched his SAS Wildthing 50 to find me waiting for him.

Everyone then joined in the combat and, as usual it proved nearly impossible to actually hit anyone when trying,

Despite the close flying, I think in total there were only 3 contacts all day although one, between myself and Alan, I don't think would have even noticed if we hadn't heard the "clack" as they came together!

Only Paul managed a real score, managing to flip my SAS Python 60 end over end.

I also brought along my Electric Ripmax Spitfire. It was a simple job to convert to a slope soarer, I just took off the propellor, fitted a receiver battery in the bottom of the cowl below the motor with a switch under the top hatch that the flight battery should go in. It balanced spot on like that with the AXI motor still fitted.

It flew beautifully too and was surprisingly easy to land.

Of course, as usual, we eventually stopped for lunch at an excellent local pub and, of course, after a large meal in a warm pub nobody quite managed to get back to the slope for the afternoon. Still a pleasant end to a great day - why were you not with us!

Updated 10 January, 2008