TOPIC: Old Warden Sept 2022

There was no OW meeting in July, so this was Modelair's 'Scale weekend'. The weather was not too kind: though we didn't have any rain it was quite windy (but flyable, just) on Saturday, it but Sunday was very blustery - when a Viper gets blown out of sky you know it's time to stop. According to my anemometer the wind was 10-15 mph with gusts over 20 mph.

Again, we were down on numbers and only Daniel and I were flying rockets. However, we had some great flights and made much smoke. Just a few photos:



Above: the Lansen is very light, but even it needed the 100mN of a CE TSP L-1 to climb above the turbulence coming off the hedge. Note the windsock!



Above: Daniel made not a few attempts to get a complete flight out of his Me 163 Komet and the very tasty semi profile Cougar. But Even after a good launch and climb out the latter could still get 'shot down' . But it did look oh-so-good in the air.



Similarly, the normally ever-reliable Draken ended up fizzing on the ground on more than one occasion.

But, if in doubt, fly T-38 talons! We both had really great flights with these, and with 320 mN up their jet pipes they powered through the chop to great heights and gave us some entrtaining aerobatics:



Above: two happy flyers!

Similarly, the Vipers went well with a TSP L-2 HP:



Too well, infact for the conditions. My Johm Emmet ersatz Viper climbed to great height (there were thermals about) and went over the trees at the far end, never to be seen again. But a spectacular end to its brief career!

Guys are definitely still interested in rocketry, and complain about the price of motors from VMC, but seemingly don't know about our website and that we have some very nice motors in stock. So I was able to spread the gospel.

As I posted earlier, my John Emmet 'Viper' made a fitting end to its career with a spectacular flight on Saturday.



Above: Launching John's Viper. It climbed to great height and flew off into the wide blue yonder never to be seen again.

The Wren, too, was a reliable performer with all sorts of L-1, even old ones:



The TSP motors performed well and we had no burn throughs:



Above: I light up the TSP L-2 in Daniel's Cougar. For preference, Dan favours genuine Jetex fuse for thia task. This is a reliable way to get ignition, but occasionally, as here, a glowing 26 SWG Kanthal element is required!

Happily, we have good stocks of these motors. Buy now while stocks last!

Daniel is a brave man and really did try valiantly to get a complete flight out of his Viper. To show how brave he is, here is the windsock on Sunday during one of the 'calmer' spells:



However, it is fair to say that this spetacular flyer seemed unaffected by the conditions:



But I think Daniel's Viper did give it the occasional fright.

Top notch pictures Roger.