Planes used at Switchblade speed

Thanks to Eric Arnaud for prompting that the plane names would also be useful:

SWITCHBLADE F3F SPEED - 27 October 2007

OPEN
1 Russel Conradt 1000 Toko
2 Brad Conlon 860 Toko
3 Paul Boswarva 788 Miraj
4 Simon Nelson 670 Cobra
5 Ziggy 341
6 Bill Williams 286 Vanessa

60 INCH
1 William Cranmer 1000 Secco Fling
2 Dennis Bird 211 Bandit

FOAMY
1 Russel Conradt 1000 Fast Freddie
2 Dave Greer 833 Wing Warrior
3 Simon Nelson 611 Zagi pink
4 Ryan Nelson 444 Zagi bashed
4 Ziggy 444 Zagi stars
6 Grant Somers 333 Zagi yellow

Speed league at Switchblade results

Coupla pics ahead of Switchblade results

Top: Scatterlings of Africa "Choice brand condoms" everywhere.....
Middle: Organiser's kit
Bottom: Will with Secco / Fling hybrid

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.... ;-)

A BIG glider

So you think you built a big glider in your garage - think again. This friend of mine in the UK is part of a WW2 military reinactment group; and as they had a bunch of guys with the German Filshirmjager (Paratrooper) outfits he decided to build a whole full scale german glider in his garage just for a photo shoot! Nuts or what.