Held at 'Thrunton Woods' on Sunday May 11th, Steve Griffiths reports from this, the fourth organised event in the PSSA's 2003 diary.  Words taken from Issue 63 of the PSSA magazine with permission.

After an early start and a 133-mile drive, we arrived at the meeting point with several minutes to spare.  We had driven mostly through sunshine, with just occasional showers, but at Thrunton Woods it was raining good and proper.  However, it was breezy, and there were signs of brightening to the West, so we were not unduly dismayed.  The South-West wind dictated that once more we were bound for Titlington Pike, some seven miles distant, so off we set.  As we were assembling our models before the rather arduous climb to the top, it rained even harder, so we sheltered in the car until it passed over.  That was a matter of a few minutes only, and turned out to be the last serious precipitation of the day.  We had a couple of light showers during the morning, and then it was sunshine and blue sky until we packed up.

The wind strengthened during the day, reaching about 20mph mid-afternoon, quite adequate to fly any of the models there, so most people took advantage of the conditions and had some good flying.  There was a mixture of models there, including electric and sport as well as PSS.  Notable among these was Chris Collis’s re-built Junkers Ju88, blasted into fragments some years back at the Hole of Horcum by the passage through it of a 7lb Tornado.  Chris has fitted it with two geared 600 electric motors, which proved very effective if a little noisy at times.  He also brought his new Arado 234 with a choice of two wings; one for gliding, the other fitted with two Speed 400 motors.  It flew well in both configurations.

Dave Andrew had his excellent little Me109s (seen previously at the Hole of Horcum, and just as good at Titlington), and the Balsacraft Fw190 and Chris Leslie’s Sea Fury also impressed.

My Tucano suffered slightly in a mid-air with Geoff Lee’s Spiteful; his wing clipped the top of my fin, knocking off the extreme tip and the non-operational rudder, and bending but not breaking the cyparis and balsa laminated fin-post - I do like cyparis, if that had been spruce or just hard balsa the whole of the fin would have been off.  It was a few seconds before I realised that the Tucano was no longer whole, as the loss of the rudder made absolutely no difference to its handling.  The damage was all fairly trivial, and relatively clean, so it was soon repaired.  Geoff’s Spiteful only got a small ding in the leading edge, so neither of us were too bothered by the incident.

I had taken my new - and unflown - FJ-4B Fury with me, and as the conditions were so amenable, I decided to give it its maiden flight.  A rather surprising vertical ascent from launch was soon countered and off it went, though needing a bootful of up-trim to remain in level flight.  It handled very well, with no surprises, and on a second flight later in the day I was able to reduce the up-trim considerably.  I was surprised by the fact that although the top surface is light grey, it was very easy to see against cloud and blue sky, and I had no difficulty with orientation, even at the considerable height it attained.  Later investigation proved that I had it balanced 1/2” ahead of where I intended, so it is now re-balanced at 30% MAC, an ounce lighter, and awaiting another flight opportunity.

All good things come to an end, though, and faced with the long drive home we set off down the hill soon after four o’clock, leaving the locals still enjoying themselves a couple of  hundred feet above us.  Once more our thanks are due to the lads of the Northumberland Gliding Group for organising an excellent day, and for getting the weather sorted out just in time.

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