Sunday Action

Once again we had a great turnout at BERG on Sunday with some making it a real family affair with picnic baskets and portable shade etc. Young Nicholas Davies enjoying a watermelon.Piet also tucking in.

There was a bit of wind and lots of puffy clouds about, but fortunately no rain. In fact it was a lovely summers day. I counted 12 cars in the car park at one time.

True to his word Michell Zimmerman brought his scale ASW to the field on Sunday.


At first he tried to launch it off skids, but the grass was too long and the model ground looped when the right wingtip nicked the grass. As can be seen in the next two photos. Fortunately there was no damage. So we tried a hand launch, which was actually very easy. The winds was quite fresh so it definitely helped. We just timed it so that the wind was dead straight up the line before launching and away she went. Very nice to see the scale pilot and cockpit. This feature always make a scale glider look real scale.

Sunday was also the first round of the November Postals and because of the wind none of the lighter models attempted it. The glass models weren't too troubled by the wind though and managed fairly well. There was still quite a lot of thermal activity, but you needed a strong moulded model to get height from a launch and to follow them. Landings in the wind, as always, were tricky. It was only Mark, Kurt, Piet and Evan that put in scores during the morning. Let's hold thumbs that next Sunday is a nice day so all BERG members can put in a score!
A new member for BERG, Karl, came to the field and brought with him a very interesting EPP electric glider called an Easy Fly. And does it live up to it's name? It is really easy to fly. It didn't have too much trouble with the wind either except for maybe being a little too flexible in the wings. It does have a carbon rob as a spar, which was a bit loose, so the wings tended to flex if one used to much elevator control. But on the whole it flew effortlessly. I would recommend this model for beginners. Being EPP is is quite strong and is ably to take quite a knock. It comes with a brushless motor, Lipo batteries, speed controller, servos and radio. All for around R2000.00. Karl did tell me where he bought it, but for the life of me I cannot remember. (Yes, okay! I know! Old-Timers light!) I will be getting the info from Karl and will post so please check back later for an update.

One very unique aspect was the rotary drive system for aileron control. No protrusions and driven by a servo mounted at the root and pushing a wire pushrod. It works by a steel pin sweeping back and forth inside a plastic housing with a smaller pin at 45 degrees to it, which actuates the aileron. It's very difficult to describe so I hope you can see how it works in the photo.