The BMFA GPS Triangle Racing Nationals 2023

Описание: A short 5 minute video impression of the GPS Triangle event held at the Phoenix MFC at London Colney, UK over the weekend of the 10th/11th June.

The competition was a very relaxed affair with only 8 Sports Class and only 6 Light Class rounds flown over the two magnificent UK summer days.

The weekend was quite uncomfortable at times as us 'lightweights' were surprised by temperatures of up to 30ºC. This left some flagging after two days under clear blue skies and relentless sunshine. Heatstroke had been a possibility, the pollen level was high, but the Phoenix club supplied plenty of bottled water to prevent dehydration.

The run of East and Northeasterly winds that plagued us in the UK for weeks in the early summer of 2023 did not relent and the competition was flown in testing conditions with awkward 'choppy' thermals especially for the Light Class where the ground windspeed seemed, at times, to exceed the upper limit of 8 m/s set in the rules. The best flight over the two day event was 14 laps in the Sport Class and 11 laps in the Light Class. Heights of up to, and over, 600 metres in the Sport Class were flown.

Simon Thornton won the Light Class and Greg Fitzpatrick won the Sport Class event. The full scores are available on the video if you pause it.

General Aviation crossing the field below the club's NOTAM of 1500 feet was not a problem. There was a spotter on the flight line to provide a warning of approaching aircraft.

As it happened, there was no trouble with the 433 MHz downlink as the competitors each settled on their own frequency channel rather than using frequency hopping. All of the entrants were using Jeti radio and there were no issues here either.

Scrutineering took place under less than ideal conditions and the weight of each model checked with a balance which weighed and measured the CG of models. A couple of models were found to be over/underweight by a few grams.

Copyright restrictions mean that his video is not available in Russia.
(Ограничения авторского права означают, что это видео недоступно в России.)

So, this is my five minute video impression of the 2 day event...

Graham Woods
Favonus.com
@favonius1