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In the interest of increasing FLYING FIELD SAFETY Members are advised that the committee expect ALL members to act in the capacity of safety officer and to strictly enforce the club's safety rules rigorously.
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 Chairman at Jurby with his Grob |
Chairman's Report - AGM 2009
Chairman’s Report 2009-11-11
This year has seen several steps forward. Firstly the members paid up their club subs very promptly, although I did have a knock on the door 3or 4 hours before the midnight deadline! Membership has reached a record level with 66 paid up members!
This has been due in part to the development of the indoor flying scene and subsequent influx of newly attracted members to the new discipline. The bi-weekly indoor sessions regularly attract around a dozen participants.
The entry system to Jurby has settled down well after a few early hiccups both by ourselves and the warders. I have been given the prison perimeter fence key on one occasion [which could have had interesting repercussions if I had felt so inclined! On the other hand I have taken on the role of warder and locked two members in and thrown away the key! We have however established a fair relationship with the prison authorities, especially after notifying them of a couple of landings of real aircraft of which they had been totally unaware! [So much for security!] Stu Peters even managered to get a photograph from out of the murk. Fancy the owner of the Blackpool Tower not being able to find his way to Ronaldsway!
Generally the flying on Jurby has been good, literally and safety wise, although we still the occasional instances of members not taking off on the windward side of the flag and pilots not standing together by the flag while flying. Pit safety can be improved also, but things are much better than they were. A lot of thought and work went into producing the safety issues and it is not nice having to be the Mr ‘nasty’ and having to remind fellow members about safety issues.
The ‘extension’ has been well used this year when necessary and continues to be a good ‘fall back’ runway. There appeared to be few, if any, instances of flying over the road although it needs continuous vigilance by members. This winter needs a session by club members scraping off of the grass sods which are proliferating. Arrangements are in hand for putting weed-killer on in the Spring, both here and on the main cross runway courtesy of JSL’s new machine.
Several ‘new planes took to the air this season, while one or two have
bitten the dust. George’s Hercules with its 4 four-stoke engines has been the
real ‘new kid on the block’, while his Cessna from last year continues to
grace our skies. Dave Harris has completed his 1/3 scale Waco and has had an
exciting test flight but has yet to make its first official public appearance.
The Scale comp went well with the weather being right the first time albeit
having the wind across the runway and a bright sun which raised some
interesting issues. There were enough entries to make it worth while.
Thanks are due to Peter Maillard and Richard Phillips for their judging.
Archallagan has been in use over the summer although hampered by not getting the grass cut regularly. This is being addressed for the future. The ‘cow’ problem has gone away, literally and metaphorically! The arrangement with JSL seems to be working quite well and we have had a reasonable use of the airfield although we would always like more weekend use especially over the summer. The annual fee and lease stays in place for another year when JSL will have to re-negotiate a new lease with the DOT. It has to be said that as someone who flies large models it always makes for safer flying having the larger area. This applies especially during the Manx Model Meet.
The ‘Meet’ went quite well although there were several niggles that need sorting out for the future. The Committee have decided in principle to hold it again next year although the date has been changed assuming it goes ahead in view of possible financial cut-backs. It is envisaged that it would start on Thursday 5th August and finish on Tuesday 17th August. This was done in order to take advantage of the grass being cut annually at the end of July and hopefully better weather. The grass not being cut was an issue this year. The previous year’s date has always clashed with committee members other commitments and hopefully this will be minimised in the future. It remains to be seen how many visitors we get with the new date, but they have not been falling over themselves to get here previously so not a great deal will be lost. However, we did have our regular visitors this year and the weather was slightly better.
The usual group of stalwarts supported the Club stand at Tynwald and raised £200 as a result of their efforts. On behalf of the Club I would like to thank those three for annually giving up their National ‘day off’ to support the club. I would ask why other members are not prepared to give up their ‘day off’ occasionally?
An effort was made to get as many members to qualified BMFA ‘A’ as possible this year and thanks to Chris Smart doing the examining, 4 members passed. So congratulations to John Webb, John Tucker, Mike Ward, Richard Phillips. We have now got some new members who will hopefully be ready to take their qualification next year.
I would like to thank the members of the committee for their work over the year. A lot of effort goes into running the various aspects of the club and it is sometimes disappointing to hear members criticising the club but not prepared to take on responsibility themselves. Most of the committee are prepared to stand again although Steve Roper wishes to stand down. However he is prepared to carry on with the web site. Steve has kept the simulator etc going here on club nights over the last couple of years with assistance from Stan. So thank you Steve for your contribution over the last two years.
I would like to finish on a pleasant note by presenting our trophies to their respective winners.
Static Scale Winner The Peveril Trophy George Redford
Flying Scale The DummiganTrophy Chris Smart
Club Enthusiast The Don Meyrick Shield Alan Gough
Technical Achievement The Fred Godley Trophy George Redford
Best Crash MMF Trophy Stu Peters
Club
Each Member of the committee has his own pegboard, to ensure that a peg board will be available , at Jurby or on the Jurby Extension .
The flying field at Archallagan is to be rented again and a pegboard will be installed on the field for the summer season.
Please bring your own pegs, with your name and frequency written on it , to the flying field.
Slope soaring on Sunday morning's is proposed and I will be giving details in the Flypaper.
The secretary needs to have your frequency and will be asking you to let him know what frequency you are operating at the present time, reply by email or post.
LMA Cosford
Four members of MMF decided to go to the annual Cosford LMA show and to camp rather than stay outside and travel in each of the two days. It was a good decision on the entertainment front but not necessarily from the comfort point of view! It was rather like the film ’Four men in a Boat’. Two in the main tent, one in the car and one in a ’bivvy’. I drew the short straw and shared with Bob who insisted the snoring came from the next tent! Richard had a flamethrower for cooking and made the quickest cup of tea I know. However we had a great laugh and really enjoyed ourselves.
From the show point of view it was excellent, with the highlights being the superb large Globemaster, complete with four jet engines. It flew as though on rails in the strong winds, while the 14ft long Hawker Hunter struggled , especially on take-off. However the Vulcan’ took the biscuit’ for majesty in the air.
The ‘Dawn Patrol’ coped well with the strong wind despite being 1/3 scale and mainly bi-planes. On the second day, one had its wings collapse in mid-air and fell in a heap. All the others had hairy landings and survived although one had some damage.
There were plenty of stalls around especially orientated to large models although there was a fair sprinkling of electric models and accessories. There were some superb scale models around 1/5 scale for sale, one especially was the P-38 looking superbly ‘weathered’ We didn’t enquire as to the price! Bob did however purchase a smaller static version to the same standard which we carried back very carefully in the car.
We worry about flight safety in our club but the evening ‘flying off the peg’ was so stressful we moved back 20 yards of our own accord as it was looking very hairy.
I say ‘off the peg’ but nobody in the evening used pegs, it was all 2.4 ghz ,presumably, as we never saw a peg board.
After a good meal in the Little Chef on the way back to the boat, Bob and Allan had it twice, once in and once out! The boat journey back was rather bumpy and took 4 hours-in the Seacat1
Brian King
Scale Day Competitions - 2009
At long last a near perfect day for an arranged competition! There were around 20 cars and participants in the general flying with enough ‘coerced’ competitors to stage a full competition for the static scale and the scale flying. Some members were reluctant at first to join in the competition but entered into the spirit of flying for the fun of it and all appeared to enjoy the experience with no dramas by anybody.
There were 5 models entered in the static scale. Ron Hooks ‘Blackburn’ complete with German Crosses [it had been captured by them!] Brian’s Flair Hannibal [built by the late Peter Mitchell] George Redford’s Cessna Skymaster in American Navy colours, Peter Kissack’s yellow ‘Cub’ and Tony Henderson’s ‘Flying Aces Racer’. With no documentation for any of the aircraft all started on a ‘level playing field’. From then on it was down to building quality and extra features. Georges Cessna featured top scoring for the amount of building, and extra features while Tony just scored most for overall standard. George was rightly judged overall winner of the Peveril Trophy.
After a suitable interval it was time to have a go at the scale flying. This was not an event for aerobatics but flying an aeroplane as near as possible to the limitations of real flying so it didn’t really matter what aircraft you had. Due to the direction of the wind Brian elected to take-off cross-wind and to complete his circuits in a similar manner with the radial-engined Hannibal which sounded so authentic as it lifted off, rather more quickly than the real one! After completing some large rectangular circuits he managed the basic manoeuvres quite well although his ‘touch and go’ was a bit of a bounce. The ‘spot’ landing was completed successfully with a very gentle ‘let down’.
Next up was Tony with his 4 stroke engined Flying Aces Racer. Again taking off cross-runway he was off with a bit of a squiggle but climbing nicely with a smaller circuit than Brian. He carried out a nice slow fly-by, loop and touch and go but had difficulty with the landing because he caught the cross-wind, however he got down safely albeit with some sideward wheel juddering.
Chris went next with his ‘Pitts Special’ [an Acrowot in disguise!]. He elected to take-off up the main runway despite the cross-wind and completed all his manoeuvres in this direction without any problems. He scored well on his stall turn, loop, touch and go, circuit and smooth flying.
George was concerned with the cross-wind effect on his Cessna as he had to fly up the main runway because of his models landing speed. His take-off and slow fly-by were excellent as was his overall smooth flying. However, he was unable to complete two of the manoeuvres so lost some scores.
When the scores were added up Chris was in front with Brian close behind. Because members joined in the spirit of competing for fun it made a good competition after 2 or 3 years of bad weather when the competition was continually being postponed.
Thanks are due to Peter and Richard for judging on an afternoon when they could have been flying like everybody else was.
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