Ah, the Winter League is under way. Founded by Mark Passingham many years ago it has become renowned as the place to test your new toys and set your new personal best. Nice to see the first event of the year carrying on the tradition with at least half a dozen happy campers. In particular Nigel Potter was justifiably chuffed with his superbly flown 33.97.
Also good to see Mark Passingham's homebrew, the Baboon, setting pulses racing with its brutish good looks and searing pace. The gorgeous, T tailed charmer put in a sub forty on its first outing. Alex had his DS mini Falcon out to play on an F3F course for the first time and it was soon gayly tweaking the nipples of its oversized opposition with a 36.xx and 37.xx.
I had my first on-course crash since a battery failure many years ago. My Skorpion had been going superbly all day and enticed me to go lower and lower. Being the easily lead type I indeed went lower and lower. Then it bounced and went higher, then lower, bounced again (upside down this time), went higher and finally came to rest not 15 feet away. I was all a bit surreal - in the same way car crashes are slow motion when you're in the thick of them. The little tinker was totally undamaged but I did have to replace the tape that held the wings on - I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to Sellotape. Next round, a little fresh tape and three feet more altitude allowed it to chuck in a 36.75. Strong plane, dumb pilot - a match made in heaven.
Final results are below and are surprisingly close given some of the big lift coming through.
Full results are here. Photos are below - hold the cursor over the thumb nail to see if there are any captions.
1 5684.91 Kevin Newton 2 5469.80 Nigel Potter 3 5463.53 Greg Dakin 4 5417.38 Mark Abbots 5 5409.01 Mike Evans 6 5375.18 Mark Southall 7 5335.65 John Bennett 8 5233.68 Mike Shellim 9 5176.70 Steve Forbes 10 5161.02 Alex McMeekin 11 5056.29 Mark Passingham 12 5034.00 Graham Reed 13 4935.59 John Phillips 14 4894.41 Mike Young 15 4860.54 Ken Woodhouse 16 4823.57 Shane Biddlecombe 17 4788.79 Andrzej Tabero 18 4743.10 Andy West 19 4740.65 Steve Clutterbuck 20 4693.08 Tom McPherson 21 4477.62 Paul Stubbley 22 4465.50 Andy Burgoyne 23 4414.59 Mick Walsh 24 4403.39 Tom Noble 25 4124.71 Peter BaileyPlease, please visit
they are the reason knewt.com exists
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