Don Valley Fly in

Last weekend, the Don Valley Fly in was cancelled due to bad weather.  It was rebooked for Sunday 13^th June and with a small amount of rearranging, the Flight hub team was able to attend.

I left the sunny midlands early Sunday morning but once outside Sheffield the weather started to look a little unsettled, as I approached Don Valley airfield though the clouds had cleared and the sun was out.

Like most shows it’s always a bit of a rush to unload all the models from the van and get all vehicles cleared out of the way ready for the spectators, Don Valley is no different but it was certainly nice and relaxed or am I just getting quicker?!

Ollie and Shaun were already on the flight line and they were keen to see the new range of 1.4m war birds, we were eager to show the Spitfire and the 109 in dog fight action, we were not disappointed.

Ollie flew his wonderful QQ 88inch Yak with some very high adrenaline manoeuvres along with some very graceful artistic aerobatics the crowd were very receptive to his fearless style.

I was asked to give a solo slot with the Extreme Flight 78 inch Extra which I must say is rapidly becoming a real favourite of mine.  It’s got a bit of weight behind it with the Bionic 10S 4800mAh cells, that allows me to present it well in any weather.  Tracking is very good and the new LiPo compatible SC 1267 and 1268 savox servos are proving to be a perfect match to my flying style.  The resolution and speed are breathtaking, top notch in fact.

Ollie and I got three great slots with the Famous Models Spitfire and 109, both of these feature the new brushless retract system which are proving to be brilliant.  The flight characteristics of these war birds is fantastic, it’s a pilots dream with great power and duration along with wonderful light loading and predictability, it’s also very easy to present this very well to spectators.

Whilst Ollie demonstrated the wonderfully flexible Famous Mirage 4000, and was hedge hopping and tree touching to the crowds delight.  I demonstrated the big Alpha Jet, showing just how well behaved this model is and demonstrating that EDF jets don’t have to be flown in a large high speed pattern.

Finally the famous mini P40 and P51 were given a good thrashing; we were really pushing these little aircraft to their limits, the problem is they just cope with everything we throw at them!  I’m looking forward to getting 3 in the air at Weston Park this coming weekend.

We really were busy at this wonderful event, if we weren’t flying then we were swapping receivers over to allow us go in the next slot.  Quite often Ollie would disappear for 10 minutes, we found out later that he had become addicted to the Cheese-burgers!

The heavens did eventually open but not until just after 4pm and then it was only for 15 minutes, this gave Ollie chance to have his final burger of the day, we captured this on camera so there was no disputing his bad habits!!

After the raffle was held we had a final flight with the 1.4m 109 and Spitfire before calling it a day.  It was a great event and very well run, we will be back there next year with some new and exciting products.