Savox Challenge a success

June 7th, 2010

steve

Savox Challenge 5^th June 2010-06-07

Held at Langar Airfield, Nottingham, England.

I arrived at Langar, on Friday evening, the airfield was pretty busy with pilots doing some final preparation which was great to see, there was a really great atomoshere. The first 2 judges were already there; Phil Hoyles and Mal Green had arrived earlier in the day to take advantage of the wonderful weather, Mal had travelled over 4 hours to get here as he lives way down south!!! You can’t beat that for dedication.

The guys helped me set up the presentation tables and put up the new Savox Banner and the Bionic flag so that it was something less for to worry about in the morning. We retired to a local pup for a refreshing drink and bite to eat, finally finishing the evening with a EPP fly off, with the “Smart” winning by a mile, or so I thought.

I awoke really early and at around 6.30am Mal and I were wringing the new Famous Mini Warbirds out, brilliant start to the day.

They really are excellent flyers; especially on 3 S 1300mAh Lipo, they certainly don’t hang around and really feel locked in commented Mal.

After a large fry up at the local café we were ready to take on the world; Ok I’m exaggerating, the Savox Challenge then!

The rest of the judges and helpers arrived at 9am, Barry James travelled all the way from York and we also had Phil Mousley, Shaun and Ollie Staples also travelling some hours from up north. At 10am I carried out the Judges briefing and issued out laminated copies of the schedule, call notes, clip boards and pens. We then set up the judges chairs and scoring table up on the flight line.

At 10.45 I carried out registration and gave the competition briefing to some nervous looking pilots. There would be 4 rounds in total for each of the classes, you could drop the 2 lowest scores and it was the pilot with the highest total score that would be crowned Savox Challenge Champion 2010 in Basic or Sportsman.

At the end of the day, you’ve got to remember 2 things; firstly to breath and secondly to just enjoy yourselves, I reminded everyone.

Ollie Staples then completed a demo flight of both schedules for the judges and pilots and we kicked the competition off at around 11.15, there is nothing worse than flying in front of your peers, so well done Ollie.

Pilots flew the first round of Basic class first and then we moved onto the Sportsman, I think it was fair to say that everyone was a little apprehensive with such an intimidating line up of judges all critiquing them, it’s not for the fainthearted.

As pilots got used to the conditions the second round was much smoother for most of the pilots and we finished round 2 and all broke for a spot of lunch and flying demos.

Barry James gave us a very low and fast demonstration of his wonderful composite Extra, it really did howl as the tips hit supersonic only feet from the runway. Ollie and I flew the Famous Models Mini Mustang and P40 Warhawk and had some great fun flying in syncro. We even managed a deliberate belly touch, brilliant flying aircraft. These will be the must have of the summer and unbelievable value for money too.

I also got to wring the Savox Extreme Flight 78 inch Extra; powered by Bionic 10S pack it’s a real showcase of technology and it’s a great flying machine. I’ve only just finished it and I still have a bit of work to do tweaking this one.

After lunch we started round 3, pilots were really getting used to it now and the competition was starting to hot up. Ollie had issued out the score cards to the pilots at lunch time so they were able to reflect on there scores, this year the judges had been able to put a few notes on the side of each score thereby assisting the pilot when they came to review them.

The final round 4 was definitely the best for the majority of pilots, so it was still all to play for. Although I had decided not to issue the scores out after each round to keep the tension as high as I could!

Ollie did a great job of calculating the scores all day and he handed me the final score card just 5 minutes after the last the flight.

As I gathered all the pilots ready for a photo shoot we all moved down to the presentation area in front of the Savox Banner and display stand, tension was high, it was a great atmosphere.

Langars Competition Secretary – Dave Gent, said a few kind words thanking the Judges, callers, helpers, Savox and CML for putting on this event. Finally the results were announced in reverse order, the summary is as follows:

The top 3 positions