Fun Fly Event 2019

Saturday 1st June 2019

The recent Fun Fly event saw a good number of members willing to have a go at the various ‘challenges’ Chris B had in store. The afternoon started with a pilots’ briefing so Chris could explain the basic rules to the entrants; after each challenge round, general flying was permitted which gave other club members an opportunity to grab a flight whilst things were a bit calmer in the air 🙂

The first challenge was a ‘climb and glide’ duration one, the aim being to climb to as high as possible using a 30 second motor run, followed by trying to stay aloft with no motor run at all. The first pilot was Dave Wilkinson, and he set an amazing target of 5 minutes… however he did achieve this with a  powered glider !! His uncle Chris managed a very creditable time of 3 minutes 20 seconds with a Wot 4 to come second, with other pilots doing well with their various aircraft.

The next event was a ‘loops & rolls’ challenge with pilots being tasked with performing 3 rolls followed by 3 loops in as quick a time as possible. Kevin Stephens took the honours this time, with a super quick time of 24 seconds closely followed by Dave Wilkinson on 28 seconds. The remaining times were all less than 50 seconds and some incredible flying styles were employed to achieve the task !

In the third challenge,  the pilots were asked to make a ‘spot landing’ with their aircraft as close as possible to a line marked on the runway. It was totally amazing how close all the pilots got to the target, but a clear winner was Chris Bougourd with a distance of 300mm (1 foot to you and me). The next closest were Nick Le Page and Dave Wilkinson who both managed to land within 500mm of the target line. Chris Wilkinson adopted an ‘unorthodox’ approach by almost hovering his flying wing up to the line, then snapping in full up elevator to stall onto the grass; however, even with this tactic, his distance was 1.5mtrs, so no prize this time Chris 🙁

The final challenge was the ‘limbo’, guaranteed to bring out the bravado in pilots. The twist with this particular challenge was that the pilots had to complete as many passes (under the ribbon) as possible within a 30 second time frame. Obviously this meant some very tight looping/turning manoeuvres would be required so as to line up for a fresh pass. Styles varied, but all pilots showed immense skill in getting the planes under the ribbon and back around for another pass. Chris Bougourd even went so far as to do one pass inverted!!!! You can see for your self the end result in the photos under this report 🙂 Chris Wilkinson managed 7 passes, Kevin Stephens and Bas Aldwell each managed 6 passes with Mick Wilkinson managing one pass before cutting the tape.

Overall, the afternoon was a great social event for members and spectators alike, a ‘prizegiving’ was held at the end of the formal proceedings and the winner of each challenge was given a small prize (kindly donated by Kevin Stephens) to recognise their skills.

Many thanks to all who participated, also thanks to those who came along to spectate and support the event and finally thanks to Alan Howell who has provided us with some great photos from the event. Let’s be looking forward to the next event which Mike Burton is organising for July, its going to be a ‘Scale day’ I am reliably informed. More details to come in due course.