Slot car racer Phil Rix passed me two stacks of 60/70's rc flying mags, full of gold dust articles, starting with the original article on the Ridge Runner, which got me in to aileron sloping, through to this interesting article on the Cape guys breaking the slope duration record in 1966. On a reed radio, nogal.....

John Lightfoot's Signal Hill team moved the local SA record to 17 hours some change in the mid seventies and the overseas folk with moooch longer daylight hours have now done a 24 hour plus cycle but the '66 log makes for interesting reading, especially regarding the lift cyles during the day, where our lad had to do a spot of serious thermaling to stay in the game.

One doubts if a serious KZN record was ever achieved (one needs a couple of SAMAA registered witnesses) but Russ Conradt's recent 8:00am flights at Derek's Dale, the current weather pattern and the slope's ability to handle SE through West winds makes it useful, as long as one does weather forecasting homework ahead of time.

I by accident achieved 4 hours 20 with my Ridge Runner at the Kloof golf course slope site in the late 70's, before the batts died (it circled down inverted and landed without a scratch ;-) but modern compact battery technology should make an 11 hour KZN record a cinch. One for Simon and the hard core.... ;-)