East Lomond Scottish Summer League Rd2

Went to Scotland yesterday to compete in the SSL at East Lomond, the forecast was good with bright sunshine and light winds and it was a great opportunity to try the Stinger in its first race. An easy 200 mile drive from Lancaster to East Lomond Hill near Falkland only took three and half hours and the first person I met in the car park was fellow southerner Mark Redsell! Shortly after the Scottish lads started turning up and we were shown the short walk up the hill to where we would be flying.

The hill is quite rounded with a steep slope, but no edge to speak of. The landing area was close by with no rotor but you had to be careful not to go too far back as there was a dead lift zone which could suck you into a small gulley. Although there was plenty of wind most of the time, the hill did not generate much lift, so ballasting was difficult and I used less and less as the day wore on and the wind got lighter until the middle of the afternoon when it suddenly got very windy and some of the ballast went back in.

I used the EM turn style throughout the day, but it did not give an advantage over reversal or yank and bank as there was not enough horizontal component of wind force to get any drive out of the corners. The best strategy seemed to be to gain as much height as possible and then fly as tight a course as possible and not make any mistakes and minimise your losses. This was very frustrating as I like to fly a more open and faster style, but this is F3F racing for you.

Occasionally you would get a thermal and this would generate the lift needed for a fast run, this normally resulted in a round win if the thermal came at the right time and position. Many a time I would get a slow run on the slope only to find a big thermal off course near the landing zone. At the lunch break I tried practising with less ballast and I launched into giant sink and all the wind disappeared, a tense five minutes was spent trying to keep airborne while the Stinger dragged its tail about looking sorry for itself while trying to avoid Euan's Cyril who was also struggling. Eventually a life saving thermal came along and dragged us both up from the pit of despair and a hasty retreat to the landing zone was made.

Fortunately the day was run very smoothly by the Scottish lads and we managed to get 14 rounds, in the belief that we would get two discards, only to find out back in the car park that two discards become active after 14 rounds i.e. 15 rounds - doh! Still I was lucky enough to get one of those elusive thermals and pop the Stinger's cherry with its first sub 40 and fastest time of the day. That and a couple of other round wins and I managed to get up to 3rd place, equalling my best finish last time I raced in Scotland last year.

Mark Redsell won although he admitted that he couldn't figure out the best way to fly the hill, trying various turn styles and different racing lines. He was closely followed by Dave Watson in 2nd place who had his brightly coloured Needle 124 flying very well indeed and looked much more settled with it than last time I saw him fly.

The standard of flying from the other guys was very good with minimum carnage and only poor Robert Carson had any damage when he had a radio problem with his Predator 3, Peter Gunning was also flying well however he had to leave early for a lunch date and only returned just as we finished for the day.

	Pilot	Rounds	Total	Discards	Final Score
1	Mark Redsell	14	12923.92	784.14	12139.78
2	David Watson	14	12725.45	658.57	12066.88
3	Tom Foreman	14	12170.12	718.15	11451.97
4	David Loomes	14	11535.50	486.57	11048.93
5	Mike McCracken	14	11585.40	718.99	10866.41
6	Ewan Maxwell	14	11333.41	665.86	10667.55
7	Craig Maxwell	14	10413.68	517.40	9896.28
8	Ian Stewart	14	10359.40	483.86	9875.55
9	Doug Maxwell	14	10088.86	555.51	9533.35
10	Peter Gunning	4	3342.28	0.00	3342.28
11	Robert Carson	1	815.57	0.00	815.57

East Lomond SSL Rd2 2013 from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.