Irish Control Line Nationals 8th September 2018 
Ringcommon Sports Ground, Balbriggan 

 

 

This event went ahead on Saturday 8th at 10.30 am despite a very negative weather forecast of rain and a fair breeze.  A final decision was made on Thursday evening and in view of conflicting weather reports we decided to go ahead and hoped for the best.  For once we got it right.  The day, although damp and overcast, had little or no rain and a gentle breeze.  There were 5 entrants for F2B aerobatics and 4 for Classic aerobatics.  Both fly exactly the same schedule but Classic is confined to the older designs of the 50s 60s. 

 

At the pilots’ briefing, the flying order was drawn and we decided, with our Judge John Molloy’s agreement, to fly the 3 rounds of F2B without a break in case the weather stopped co-operating. The best 2 rounds were to count for placing 

 

Everyone else having had a test flight, Kevin Barry did the demonstration flight for the judge with his recently electrocuted Yatshenko and round 1 started. The flying order was:  Ivan Bolton, Peter Bradshaw, Kevin Barry, Stu Holland and Maurice Doyle.   

 

Round 1. At the end of the round Maurice had established a clear lead with a score of 928 while the rest of us were in the 800s.  Kevin’s Yatshenko refused to go despite behaving flawlessly in the previous flight, the ESC playing him a nice serenade on the flight line no matter what he did.  He declared an attempt (muttered some profanities about electric powered F2B models) and left the flight line to assemble his trusty Arkoosho glow powered reserve model.  At the end of the round it was Maurice, Stu (trailing Maurice by 39 points) Peter, Ivan and Kevin.   

 

Round 2 as with subsequent rounds showed a big improvement in scores with 3 fliers breaking the 900 threshold:  Maurice 954, Kevin 922 and Ivan 904.   

 

Round 3 began with Maurice with an unassailable lead but the rest of us had everything to fly for as far as the remaining places were concerned.  At the end of Round 3 Maurice had improved his score to 990 and was clearly the winner.  Ivan scored 916 and Stu crossed 900 with a score of 929.  The end result was Maurice 1st place. Ivan 2nd place. Stu 3rd place 

 

The competitors and models in order of placing 

 

Name                     ModelPower 

Maurice DoyleAquila (Trivial Pursuit derivative)ST 60 

Ivan BoltonSV 11Electric 

Stu HollandCardinalElectric 

Kevin BarryArkooshoStalker 61 

Peter BradshawBlue PearlST 51 

 

Classic Aerobatics 

 

After a break for lunch the Classic competition was next.  Disaster struck as Maurice’s U2 piled in during a practice flight.  Post mortem showed a lead out failure.  Left to fly were Kevin, Ivan and Stu.  Two rounds were to be flown with the best to count. Kevin was first to fly and got a mad rich engine run which prevented him from attempting much of the schedule.  Stu flew next and got his best score of the day at 946 well ahead of Ivan’s which did not cross 900.  Round 2 saw Ivan improve his score to 933 (again his best score of the day) with Kevin trailing well behind.  So it was over:  Stu 1st,  Ivan 2nd and Kevin 3rd . 

 

Competitors and models in order of placing 

 

Name ModelMotor 

Stu Holland SmoothieFOX 35 

Ivan BoltonCrusaderElectric 

Kevin BarryAriesFOX 35 

 

So, ended the 2018 CL Nationals.  Thank you to our Judge John Molloy, Ringcommon Sports Clun for the Venue and Chris Gilbert for the Excel Spreadsheet program which made the calculation of the score simplicity itself