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A view
down the Conwy estuary looking SSW from the launch
point on the Great Orme
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This was the second event held during
2007 at this magnificent cliff top venue in North Wales.
It was planned as a 2 day meeting but over the 4 days prior
to the “fly in” I had been monitoring 2 of the web weather
stations for this area and found that light winds and
showery periods were expected. To avoid abortive
journeys for those planning to attend on Saturday a note was
placed on our website on the Friday confirming the
cancellation of the first day.
Sunday was forecast to provide winds of
30mph or more directly onto the North West slope, the most
favoured direction for this venue. By the time I
arrived on site Sunday morning around 10am I was greeted by
much stronger winds, so strong in fact that I found it
difficult to stand upright to take a wind meter reading.
It was blowing a 50 mph gale! Within the next half
hour or so around 16 fliers had arrived from far and wide
plus a few local modellers.
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Of these 7 eventually plucked
up courage to fly in these extremely windy
conditions. I was delighted to meet up
again with Ron Collins and Andy Conway from
Edinburgh, two of our original PSSA members of
over 20 years ago. Phil Cooke, our
webmaster arrived from Derbyshire, Nigel Moule,
from Worcestershire, 2 stallwarts, Steve
Griffiths and Mike Briggs, who travelled over
from West Yorkshire and one of our recently
joined members Steve Kemp, from Gt. Harwood,
Lancashire. |
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(left to right)
Andy Conway, Ron Collins and Steve Kemp up on
the Orme |
There were at least 26 aircraft in the
display area and of these 22 were of different aircraft
designs ranging from wartime and post war jet and piston
powered aircraft, a civilian racing plane and a commercial
jet aircraft – quite a wide collection!
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Nigel Moule enjoys the lift with his T-33 |
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Andy Conway
and Ron Collins soon had their Boulton Paul P111
delta and North American F-86 Sabre carving up the
sky and both pilots seemed to be thoroughly enjoying
the occasion. Phil Cooke and Nigel Moule
treated us to high speed jet flights with their 2
Lockheed T33’s built from the U.S. Wade Kloos kit.
Later we saw Phil flying his Hawker Sea Fury, own
design, in conditions ideally suited to this fairly
heavy model. I managed a reasonable flight
with my Dewoitine 520, originally built by Paul
Janssens from Belgium, until the final approach when
a heavy landing resulted in me offering the model
for repair and future ownership to a local PSS flier
who has since restored the model to its former
glory. |
Steve Kemp seemed to enjoy every minute
flying his Grumman Bearcat and also later his Saab JAS-39
Grippen canard delta, built from the Italian Scorpio kit.
This is originally designed for use with an electric powered
fan, and for me, this was the model of the meeting.
The fuselage of this model is in fibreglass and the wings
are of Technopor foam. Steve uses an electronic mixer
for controlling the elevons, the forward mounted canard
being non moveable.
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Alan
Hulme launches for Steve Kemp... |
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...and the Grippen revels in the conditions! |
All fliers who entered the competition
were invited to complete a simple voting form towards the
end of the afternoon and as a result Steve Kemp was declared
the overall winner with the highest number of votes and was
presented with the Gt. Orme PSSA Trophy for 2007.
Details of the vote were as follows:-
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Best Static Piston
Aircraft |
Grumman
Bearcat |
Steve
Kemp |
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Best Static Jet
Aircraft
|
Saab
Grippen |
Steve
Kemp |
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Best Flown Piston
Aircraft
(Joint winners) |
Grumman
Bearcat
Hawker
Sea Fury |
Steve
Kemp
Phil
Cooke |
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Best Flown Jet
Aircraft
(Joint winners) |
Boulton
Paul P111
Lockheed
T-33 |
Andy Conway
Phil
Cooke |
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BAe
Hawk 200 by Andy Conway - not flown in the
gales! |
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From
comments passed by many of those who were at
this meeting it was a great success, in spite of
the testing flying conditions, and already we
have indications that many will return later
this year for one or other of the 2 proposed
2008 meetings.
See the
PSSA
Events list for the latest information! |
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