Last Saturday at B.E.R.G

Just thought I would share with you this wonderful winter day!

Michel

HTL Catchup

It's been a while since I've done any blogging here, hope I can still remember how to do this. Below are some pictures and short summaries for the last three HTL contests - hopefully drumming up some enthusiasm for Sunday's 5th Round of the series scheduled for Silverton. See you there.

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HTL #4 BERG
June 7, 2009
By some amazing stroke of luck the big cold front predicted to spoil our Sunday flying was held at bay by some large high pressure system that settled over the interior and we were treated to an absolutely perfect gliding day. Great cloud formations, light winds and very variable and challenging thermals.

BERG support was disappointing with Piet off sick and only Gordon and myself representing the BERG team. I flew my trusty old Sagitta and Gordon flew his Fling.



It was great to see the guys from Boksburg participating despite Alan and Juanita being away at the World Games to fly F3K (in which he placed second - well done Alan. See the MGA Blog for his report).

Also great to see Don Slater visiting us here in Gauteng again and taking part in the competition. SGC, MMS and ETB were all well represented with more than one team each.

The F3B team used the contest as an opportunity to practice the F3B duration task with their Ceres models and did very well against the majority F3J models. Winner in the Open Class was Craig Goodrum with Paul and Chris sharing second place.

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HTL #3 MMS
April 5, 2009
Yes, this was way back when the grass was still green ... just seems so long ago. The MMS HTL was flown at the BERG field and BERG was represented by myself, Piet, Robert, Jochen and Tony.

Weather was cool with hardly any wind early in the early morning working up to a fair breeze by lunchtime. The afternoon rounds had us chasing thermals under the cumulus clouds far downwind.

Results were Michelle first, Craig second and Paul third - with the points very close.

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HTL #2 SGC
March 8, 2009
A last minute venue change from GGGC to the lush SGC field for the second leg of the HTL league and hot, humid and light wind conditions set us up for a really great day of flying.

Thermals were strong but small so in most slots all models would huddle into the same thermal resulting in some close calls. Just unlucky were Craig and Gert when their models touched. Not too much damaged but both models retired from the contest.

BERG posted two teams comprising myself, Piet, Jochen, Peter and Tony.

Paul, Deon and Johan took the first three places.

A really great social day with many pilots staying well after the contest finished to fun fly and socialise.

Dangers of Props

Be careful when testing your electric motors.
While Trevor was testing the current draw on his 540 brushed motor with folding prop, a blade snapped of and hit his son, Wesley in the face.

Wesley at the hospital

He is a very lucky chap not to loose an eye or have his jugular vein severed.

Ouch

It seems these props might be faulty, because when Trevor took the plane out to fly the next weekend another blade snapped of exactly the same. Luckily this time nobody was in the way.

Small, but lethal

And as can be seen here, Wesley is healing nicely.

UPDATE - 12th July 2009

Ol' Scarface has just sent me a few more photos showing how he is healing. Nice battle scar there young man!

Roets Aeromodel Design

How many of you remember the large Scale J3 Cub I posted a few months ago. Well Chris has his own Blog now. And he has some new models in his stable.

Check out Roets Aeromodel Design http://www.roetsaeromodeldesign.blogspot.com/

Chris says he would love to come and fly at BERG one weekend and even do some aerotow for us. If anyone wants to get hold of him, you can phone him on 082 572 2118

I recon one of these beauties are perfect for the job.

So get those big scale gliders ready guys.

SOS Children’s home demonstration day.

Sherk is not only a Movie Star.

Yesterday I had to collect the work that I took to Silverton no so long ago and this time round knew that I could pop in to Craig Baker’s (Cloud base Composites) factory next door for a quick cup of coffee. This time it was no surprise to Craig when he saw me.

After seeing the post on the BERG blog he decide to give his workshop complete make over and a spring clean just in case a Berg reporter pitched up again and start snapping some pictures for the BERG blog. To help him he had call in his veteran Tug-pilot (Shrek) as you can see entering his Wilga A35 tug from a unusual top wing position to do some instruments checking.


Sherk is not only a Movie Star but he happens to be a very active tug pilot on weekends at the Silverton model gliding club near Pretoria. During the week he helps Craig with the maintenance and building of beautiful model RC gliders.




To see more of his activities you can go to Cloud base Composites blog at this link .http://cloudbase-composites.blogspot.com/

Big Exl

Chris and his 3M electric Big Exl

Really nice electric glider but at more than 3 Kg tricky to setup, cover some sky in a hurry and fully aerobatic.

F3B Practice at BERG

Lionel and Michelle about to launch a Deon’s F3B glider.

On Sunday morning the weather did not look promising for a good thermal activity and RC gliding at all, but I needed my flying fix for the week and also to go and help BERG newest member Chris to maiden his 3 meter electricship.

Deon concentrating on landing after a speed run.

Take that!!! ( Lionel with a strong right hand launch)

I did not expect many members to turn up. To my surprise and as I turned into the gate at the Berg field there were 4 cars ahead of me heading for the parking spot. It turned out to be the SA F3B team all geared up and ready for practicing for not so far away upcoming world F3B championships later on this year.

BERG's newest members Johan and Chris with their keen youngsters.

Apart from a light to moderate wind (that started out somewhat southerly and then turned NW) the flying we did turned out okay.

Later on Stefan arrived and had us all amazed with his latest discus launch glider demonstrating some good launching heights