BMFA Nostalgic Speed Nationals – incorporating Weatherman Speed note click hyperlinks for additional information such as plans
The BMFA Nostalgic Speed Nationals were held over the weekend of 20th to 21st August at the BMFA site at Buckminster.
The event was attended by a good number of C/L Speed participants, and a great deal of flying was undertaken.
The weather was fine and dry for the whole weekend and Saturday 20th proved a little windy at about 15mph, basically this mimicked the weather at Barton where the Open Speed Nat’s were held over the same weekend, however the weather did not hamper flying at either event. On Sunday the wind dropped to less than 10mph at Buckminster and conditions were very pleasant.
The Nostalgic event attracted both Weatherman and Vintage Speed models and new speed records were set across a number of classes. Weatherman is something like the Proto classes in North America, it is a standing start and acceleration event along with ultimate top speed.
The winner in Weatherman was Peter Fox with his nicely finished Fora 2.5cc powered model.
Peter Fox’s Class 3 and 4 record breaking model and overall, Weatherman Nat’s winning model. Powered by a Fora 2.5cc Goodyear engine
On the Saturday all flying was undertaken on the caged tarmac hard circle utilising the SAM Transitrace optical timing system, ably operated by Mike Edgerton who has also organised power in the form of new LiPo batteries which have considerably extended the operational time of the computer. There were a few oddities with some of the measured lap times and it is thought that these might be caused by the fact that very large R/C models were also being flown all weekend and the optical sensor was pointing in their flightpath.
On Sunday the morning flights also used the tarmac circle but flying moved in the afternoon to one of the very good grass circles for models such as Weatherman 0, 1 and 2 as these models use lines too short (35 and 42 feet respectively) which are too short to be able to reliably land on the Buckminster tarmac ‘doughnut’.
Buckminster grass circles with Weatherman speed models.
For these shorter lines the tarmac circle is fine IF you manage to land on the tarmac, but if the final glide takes the model into the step-up from the inner grass ring to the smooth tarmac surface it could cause substantial model damage.
However, it must be noted that when flying from the Buckminster grass circles the grass is so short and smooth that notably not one of the models, even the tiny Weatherman class 0 suffered a single tumble on landing… it’s SO much better than the tussocks and long grass of Old Warden for C/L flying smaller models! Take-offs were mostly made from a short linoleum take-off mat which prevents the significant and costly erosion of carbon fibre propeller blades when taking off from grass.
There were a couple of mishaps over the weekend… one was caused to Tony Goodgers flight of his Class 4 Weatherman when a gust of wind blew his hat off and it seemed most likely that the distraction caused a glitch in his otherwise perfectly ‘grooved’ flight, resulting in a very hard landing at full speed and full power with his class 4 Weatherman (well over 100mph) which left a trademark ‘Goodger blue’ smear on the tarmac with a broken prop, bent spinner backplate and an abraded under-fuselage but luckily no serious damage to the model or engine.
The overall winner of Vintage speed was David Farmer flying a Class 6 Monitor from 1955 (click for plan 1 and plan2), Dave’s model is a real beauty as can be seen from the photos. The model is powered by a McCoy 49 which David has spent some time getting better gas flow for increased performance and David thinks there is still more to come!!
David Farmers 1955 design Monitor powered by a McCoy 49, beautifully finished.
Front shot of David Farmers McCoy 49 powered model, note modified APC prop.
Notable was a discussion that centred on wondering what the Weatherman designer Cyril Shaw would make of his model, designed originally for the Mills 1.3cc but now still in it’s original size but powered by larger and considerably more powerful engines and flying at airspeeds in excess of 130mph. The Fora 2.5 Goodyear engine seems to particularly well suited for this application because it now not only holds the Class 3 (2.5cc) class record at a speed of 120.4 mph, set earlier this year but it now also holds the Class 4 (3.5cc) record, at 118.17 mph bettering the existing Class 4 record by 8.69 mph!
Results
Vintage Speed
Position Name Class Best speed (mph) Handicap Medal
1. D Farmer Class 6 134.43* 100.5% G
2. A Goodger Class 6 132.05 98.7% S
3. J Huning Class 6 114.47 85.6% B
4. D Farmer Class 5 119.82 80.4%
* New British Record
Weatherman speed
1. P Fox Class IV 118.17* 108.1% G
2. P Fox Class 0 85.92** 100.7%
3. A Goodger Class IV 108.10 99.6% S
4. P Fox Class III 119.83 99.4%
5. D Finch Class VII 115.10 93.2% B
6. D Finch Class VI 105.32 92.0%
7. M Edgerton Class II 85.43 91.7%
8. D Farmer Class VI 104.67 90.9%
9. D Smith Class IV 96.48 88.9%
10. J Huning Class II 81.74 87.7%
11. D Finch Class IV 93.12 85.8%
12. D Finch Class II 72.96 78.3%
13. B Greenaway Class I 38.04 53.9%
* New British record
** New SAM record