Rooster F3F: Cold and Windy Hawes

Well I went all the way to Hawes and didn't do any flying, shame on me. I don't have any excuses apart from not having much love for flying in 55 to 65 mph winds. I thought I'd just shoot video and take photo's instead of my more hardy compatriots, but even this was too difficult with the unrelenting wind making the camera difficult to hold and my eye streaming so much I couldn't see anything through the view finder.

Even worse was we were lucky to get Jon Edison to visit our slope and bring the course with him, so I missed out on getting some timed practise.

Rich Bago managed fastest time of the day with a 28.xx but with a crow through, Paul Upton was 2nd best with a 32.xx (also with a crow through) but the computer was predicting a 25.xx until Paul made a few mistakes, sure had the wings bending well on the Needle 124. Could probably have handled more ballast, if Paul had any more but not so sure about the wing joiner.

Keith had a problem with a flap seal catching on a wing skin, leaving one flap hanging, although he managed to expertly land it, fix it and get it flying again. A couple of others also had similar problems, don't know why maybe the wind or the cold causing problems.

Frank and Mark also flew, so well done to them, landings were tricky in that you could get blown too far back, but everyone managed who flew, as long as you picked the best spot with the smoothest air.

We saw a couple of Police on Husky trail bikes patrolling the green lanes, the farmer came up to say hello, think we owe him a bottle of Whisky now if we want to start having proper competitions up there in the future, but turned out a pretty successful day.

Pretty cold on the bases, 5 layers of clothing, goretex boots, balaclava, wooly hat and wind proof gloves were not enough, think its time to get some thermal long Johns or turn the central heating down at home!

Fastest Times – HAWES

1 RICH BAGO 28.72

2 PAUL UPTON 32.37

3 FRANK HULTON 33.38

4 KEITH WOOD 34.11

5 MARK TREBLE 39.82