The contest took place yesterday and the winner was a real surprise.  Dave Gee showed up with a 1944, Guillow's, Curtiss Robin made from an actual kit he purchased on eBay. 

Now the Guillow's dimers were particularly difficult to build.  I doubt that any tween aged boy could have built one and gotten it to fly without experienced help. but a middle aged man with decades of experience is another matter.  If you can finish one they are quite light, this one being 8 grams.  It floated around the room.  He initially had some trouble getting it to turn left in the room, so he trimmed it to turn left and got flight of just under a minute.  With the R.O.G. flight bonus and a fair appearance score it was enough to win the contest.

Second place was Joe Whiting with his Comet Howard DGA 8 which also got flights in the 50 to 60 second range, but he didn't R.O.G. although he had a better appearance score.

Third place was Don Butman flying a Comet Porterfield 65.

There were 12 models entered, including a couple that did not show up for last weeks trimming session, another Comet Farman 400 and a Comet Fokker DVII.  Oh, and another error in attribution, that Stinson 105 (See previous post.) is a Hi-Flier plan, not Comet.  As with all indoor contests, especially in this venue, the winners managed to trim their turns tightly enough to stay away from the walls and obstacles.

Apparently, a good time was had by all and I got complements on the smooth running of the event.

cdwebb wrote on May 19^th, 2016 at 2:42pm:



No dime scale models were injured in the production of these videos. 

Here are some more videos.  The basketball backstops are a problem at this venue.

https://youtu.be/r9TatP6KdmA

https://youtu.be/KVX37JSvoMA

https://youtu.be/HBVHBD1jkXE

https://youtu.be/j-5b-TvZ-h8

Had a few more models to trim at the flying session this morning. Added to the potential entries are Comet Farman 400, two Comet Howards, and a Bristol Brownie. I believe the latter was from a neo-dime plan.  I know that another Bristol Brownie and a Farman 400 are on members building boards, with rumors of a Hi-Flier Monocoupe and a Comet P-26 coming also.  There was an error in a previous post, the P-12 was from Megow plans, not Hi-flier.

KF, nice looking airplanes and the videos were a treat.

Thanks for posting for those of us who are still experiencing bad flying weather.

Here's the rest of today's pictures.

At the Black Sheep meeting last night (O.F.F.C. is a sub-group of Black Sheep.) there were a couple of enlarged "Nickle Scale" models for the contest, a Stinson and a PT-19.  There were lots of plans being passed around and references for plan lookup being given.  Looks like this one will be well attended.

At the end of every year the members of the O.F.F.C decide the schedule of monthly contests for the coming year.  The contests are held in the Stonehurst gym on the last meeting day of the month, currently Wednesdays.  The March contest was Dime Scale, and I was "volunteered" to be the Contest Director (One of the benefits of coming to a meeting late.)

Now we are a casual group and the full complexity of FAC contest rules are a bit much, especially for a contest that must be completed in 1 hour and 45 minutes of a 2 hour session, so, as in all of our contests, the Contest Director is free to come up with a 'relaxed' set of rules for the event. The rules I came up with for this event are attached.

The reference to reproduction kits upgraded with plastic parts is to include things like the Hi Flier dimers, re-released in the 1970s with the original 1930s plans and printwood, but some had additional blown plastic cowls and wheel pants.  At today's flying session a Comet Taylorcraft, a Megow SE5, and a Megow P-12 were flown for trim.  Judging by the way they were performing by the end of the session this should be an interesting contest.

More later.