As usual the contest got under way with duration. Slot 1 was fairly easy with all but one pilot flying it out. I wont with a 9:59 100. The 2nd slot was harder and the winning score was 8:47 60, by Brian Johnson - f3j experience paying off it would seem. Jon Sage didn't do his usual job in duration and dropped a few points. The final slot was similar to the first with Steve Haley winning the slot. Paul Carrington only flew 2 seconds less, but only made a 35 landing due to lumpy air in the landing zone.
Slot one of distance was won by Bob Dickenson over myself and John Sage. I had done a few inside turns believing there to be a corridor of lift, but Bob kept pushing out and it proved the correct decision and Bob got a lap on me despite my higher launch (21 to my 20). In the next slot Paul Carrington was back in the grove putting a couple of laps on Clive and Simon. Slot 3 was a bit of a mess with John Whittle not getting the buzz, which resulted in a re-flight that he drew against Steve. In the last slot Dave Worral put a lot of laps on John Penton and Bill Haley. I didn't see that one unfortunately.
Round 2 of distance started with a good contest and Jon Whittle and Jon Sage (yes too many Jo(h)ns) sharing 1000 points with 19 laps each. Unfortunately in the next slot Paul lot his model when it didn't pull out of the dive on the launch. That was a real shame as Paul was just coming back to f3b and seemed to be enjoying it. The results was a bit of a 3d jigsaw (but not fun for the whole family). Steve took the 1000 from Bob in the end. I won the next slot against Clive and Bill and Simon Haley took the last slot flying his precious.
As usual the contest would be decided in speed, but not in the normal way (Steve kicking bottom!). Steve indeed won the first round with a 17.84, with the best of the rest all in the 19s. I did a rather poor run for a 20.50 which was not very pleasing and Jon Sage was unfortunate to have a cut on base A. At least Jon seemed to be getting back in to it and hopefully we will see the Radical again soon.
The second round started with myself flying a 18.57 and Jon W flying a 18.49. At this point I thought I was vying for second with Jon, but Steve, of all people, crashed his model on the final leg of his speed run to end his contest. As crashes go it wasn't a dramatic one as the model was being flown back low to base A and the model was not badly damaged by any means. After that surprise the next best time was 18.87 by Simon. Clive flew both his speeds well I thought, with low 20s.
At this point I knew the contest was between Jon Whittle, Simon and me. Rough mental calculations told me John was slightly ahead of myself going in to the final round of duration, with Simon in 3rd (I thought). Simon won his slot of duration meaning that Jon W and myself had to score well in the final slot, flying against each other. I knew Jon was ahead on the scores and was hoping for a tough slot, which would give me an outside chance to take some points off Jon, but as it turned out the slot was very easy and there was more danger off loosing your model to a cloud than not flying out 10 minutes. Jon Sage recorded a launch of about 300m and I was doing aerobatics after about 6 minutes to loose height. I took the 1000 with a 10:00 100
In the end the winner was Jon Whittle, which was reward for flying consistently well. As it turned out Simon was a lot closer to me than I thought, so I needed the 1000 in the final slot. Results below.
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