2013 BMFA F3F Rd 4 Bishops Hill Scotland

Fantastic days racing at The Bishop last Sunday, plenty of sun and wind, it doesn't get any better than this! Paul and I rocked up early Sunday morning from the North West, an easy drive on empty roads about three and half hours. We had been told to meet at East Lomond but were delighted by a phone call from Mark Redsell to tell us the venue had changed to Bishops which is the preferred hill.

Paul and I arrived first as we hadn't even got to East Lomond and didn't have long to wait for the others to turn up before we started the long but pleasant climb to the top.

The whole shindig was up and running by 11:00 a.m. and I had high hopes for a decent result which soon resulted in a disastrous cut and I was soon in last place out of the sixteen runners. I persevered with my EM turns but seemed to struggle, I changed some settings which made a small improvement but still not fast enough with mid forty second times. Eventually I decided that the only way to salvage the day would be to revert back to reversals which I havn't done in 9 months, immediately my times dropped to sub forties and eventually I got fastest time of the day, so I was happy with that!

So lots to think about and I might have to adopt a more pragmatic approach to my flying and choose the fastest style to suit the hill and the conditions on the day.

1          Mark Redsell                 10490.94          1000.00

2          Kevin Newton                10420.47          993.28

3          Paul Upton                    10395.50          990.90

4          Peter Gunning               10188.56          971.17

5          Mike McCracken           9955.96            949.00

6          Mark Treble                   9937.30            947.22

7          Tom Foreman                9919.80            945.55

8          David Reid                    9779.07            932.14

9          Ronnie Lampe               9641.70            919.05

10        Frank Hulton                  9575.62            912.75

11        Ewan Maxwell                9325.86            888.94

12        Mick Walsh                   9235.10            880.29

13        George Young               8965.44            854.58

14        John Treble                   8650.03            824.52

15        Dave Watson                8536.20            813.67

16        Gonzalo Garcia-Atance  7863.26            749.52

FTD. Tom Foreman 35.20


2013 BMFA F3F Rd 4 Bishops Hill Scotland from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

Horcum 2013 F3F Eurotour

Another punishing weekend at the Hole, beautiful weather, shame about the wind, very variable! A few photos while I work on the video.

Video now added!

Horcum 2013 F3F Eurotour from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

Post BMFA Nationals

Well a week on from the Nationals and its time to reflect on what happened. Paul and I drove down on the Friday to arrive at a sunny Wrecker about lunch time to get some practise in, wind was bang on the slope and blowing a steady 30mph. I've never experienced lift so strong, it was awesome, Paul flew his Race MX first and was lapping it up, the strong narrow compression zone suiting his flying style. Then we both walked across the road and up to the top of the Back of the Wrecker to see what the landing zone was like, quite turbulent and the model came down quite abruptly, but the soft grass cushioned the fall.

I flew the Xenon next, the conditions suited this model perfectly, being a cross tail it flies on rails with no nasty tendencies, very firmly planted in the sky with great handling. It was really pinging out of the turns, and if I was brave enough I could even spot the front side DS shear layer above the little island of land that juts out from the cliff side to get a satisfying front side DS kick!

Now it was my turn to be guided over the road by Paul to the landing spot, by this time Mark Redsell and Pengy had turned up as well as a few others, the good weather and wind meant the hill would soon be getting busy.

I wanted to fly the Stinger next to see how it compared to the sure footed Xenon, it was a lot livlier and nervous and not as pleasant to fly as the Xenon in the strong lift, even with full ballast which made it feel a bit dull and unresponsive. I now had a problem that the Xenon had flown so well that I was tempted to race that instead on the Saturday. A few more flights with the Stinger eventually convinced me that the Stinger was faster but only just, and I decided to stick to the plan and race that instead.

Because there was a road bike race (Dragon Race) we couldn't get any accommodation in our usual Bridgend haunt so we slummed it in the opposite direction, Merthyr Tydfil. The Castle Hotel was nice enough apart from the heating being on full blast in the middle of summer, our room was on the third floor and all the heat was rising to the top the building, the room felt about 30 deg C! Still no need for any post flight chatter as you passed out pretty quickly as soon as your head hit the pillow, cracking cooked breakfast and 24h bar downstairs so on balance pretty good!

Saturday dawned another sunny day and we rocked up the wrecker about 8:30 a.m. with high expectations, as always, but we all know F3F is a cruel sport and all sorts of stuff can go wrong, so best to stay positive!

My first run was pretty good with a 38.75, then a couple of low 40's and then a 37.80, sounds pretty good until you realise that the fast guys were all doing sub 35's and Joel West who won even did a sub 30, basically a sub 35 was the new sub 40! Still I stuck to my guns and flew pretty good for me and ended up in 9th place after the first day. Still lots of room for improvement as my turns were too tight, I was missing the sweet spot of the narrow compression band, especially on the pump outs, and I kept cutting, well nearly cutting, but when you have to make a correction in a turn, it throws you off line for the next turn.

The landings were hard work as there could be up to 5 planes stacking up in the landing circuit as people walked over the road. I was flying pretty heavy ballasted, but fortunately there was tonnes of lift every where. I preferred to speck it out to get out of other peoples way, but it was still pretty stressful. I had a couple of dodgy landings, the worse one saw her heading out low towards the car park and hitting a load of sink, I managed to get around with enough height to grease her in at my feet, probably the best landing I've ever done!

The Wrecker did wreck quite a few models about 6 or 7, some got damaged on launch as the rotor grabbed them and slammed them into the ground. Others got damaged on landing, some got sucked into the pockets of sink close to the slope edge. Some flicked out of sight to the bottom of the cliff or stalled and went in, quite a frightening place to fly really, but that's part of the Wrecker experience.

Sunday was another day of glorious sunshine, but less wind and less lift, this made flying harder to get a quick time and you really needed some luck with the thermals. I flew better than the Saturday with less mistakes and better pump outs, but unfortunately this didn't equate with any progress up the rankings and I fell back to 11th place. With only three rounds flown the wind then changed direction and that was the end of the comp. Pity really as I could have done with some extra rounds to get back into the top ten, but that's racing for you.

Fantastic weekend of racing, best I've ever experienced and well run by the organisers, Martin, AJ, Simon, JP and everyone else involved.

1	Joel West	9565.03	1000
2	Martin Newnham	9258.3	967.93
3	Mark Redsell	9082.52	949.55
4	Mark Abbotts	8965.73	937.34
5	Paul Upton	8948.36	935.52
6	Mike Evans	8828.1	922.95
7	Greg Dakin	8814.82	921.56
8	Rich Bago	8686.53	908.15
9	John Phillips	8648.37	904.16
10	Jonathan Wells	8567.77	895.73
11	Tom Foreman	8540.41	892.87
12	Mike Shellim	8509.74	889.67
13	Frank Hulton	8470.78	885.59
14	Mark Treble	8329.9	870.87
15	Paul Garnet	8292.64	866.97
16	Keith Wood	8287.31	866.41
17	Simon Thornton	8190.99	856.34
18	Scott Ravenscroft	8090.49	845.84
19	Andy Burgoyne	8047.21	841.31
20	Ronnie Lampe	8025.52	839.04
21	Graeme Mahoney	8023.17	838.8
22	Jon Edison	7770.78	812.41
23	Tony Livingston	7625.39	797.21
24	Mick Walsh	7574.89	791.93
25	Martin Drewett	7557.62	790.13
26	Ian Web	7036.83	735.68
27	Tony Robertson	6984.54	730.21
28	John Treble	6976.09	729.33
29	Pete Burgess	6899.84	721.36
30	John Bennett	6118.42	639.66
31	Ron Boughton	4613.79	482.36
32	Ian Falconer	1947.98	203.65

2013 BMFA F3F Nationals Wales from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

RCRCM Dorado

Got hours of footage of the Nationals to wade through, but while your waiting here is a dirty little edit of Greg Dakin flying his RCRCM Dorado after the comp was finished, lovely smooth flying!


Dorado from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

BMFA 2013 F3F Nationals - Wales

Wow what a fantastic weekend of blue skies, wind, awesome lift and friendly company. Will write more later, but here are some photos of the weekend to wet your appetite...

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.

Hawes Day Out

Our race at the Hole of Horcum got cancelled yesterday, so Mandy and I decided to go for a BBQ in the Dales on top of Weather Top near Hawes, of course I took the new Stinger with me in case there was any wind.

The day started with a gentle breeze and I first flew empty under the dark clouds before landing and getting the BBQ lit and the Chicken Kebabs cooking. While Mandy and I ate our tasty food the sun came out and the breeze started to freshen up a little so I first tried 3 slugs (240g) and then 5 slugs (400g) of ballast. The Stinger is proving to be one of those slippery models that doesn't need much ballast.

Although not mega lift conditions the thermals came through and every now and again the lift went crazy with good 40 sec air. Flew all afternoon as the conditions were so nice, it makes a change to be warm on the slope edge. Mandy tried video with her fancy new Canon 5D camera rather than the normal Panasonic compact, but with no digital viewfinder, a heavy SLR lens and forgetting to switch on the OIS meant footage was a bit shaky. Still she had fun experimenting even though I had a lot to cut out when it came to editing, still beggars can't be chooser's and I'm thankful for any footage of me. Of course all the good air and fancy aerobatics were missed while para-gliders, walkers and cyclists grabbed all the attention!

Unfortunately a road cyclist had a serious tumble below the front of the slope and a air ambulance was called to whisk him away, fortunately he was wearing his helmet, but it looks like he broke a few bones.

Some big boomer thermals came through and it was possible to speck out and then dive back down with the Stinger screaming away nicely, does very good square edge loops!

Finally it was time to go home, but not before we stopped off at Hawes for some ice cream, it was really warm in the bottom of the valley where Hawe's is located and there was a great holiday atmosphere with everyone sat outside the pubs drinking and eating while admiring the shiny motorbikes and sports cars parked outside, fantastic day out!

Hawes Day Out from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.