Hi Guys,

I’ve finally gotten some free time and access to the internet to update how things went at the masters. I’ll start from the flights to music and go through to the finals on Sunday.

Saturday was freestyle flight and the 3d masters set music. My freestlye flight wasn’t too bad, the nerves set in a little but managed to put in a half respectable flight. In the afternoon the winds had picked up to 30+knots blowing directly into your face. The gusts where much like the wings over whiteman display day last year. The flight to music in the conditions turned out to be much the same as all the pracitse at home, which i was rather happy with in the conditions.

I found out the next day i scored 7th in that flight, which i found hard to believe as the feed back didnt reflect the scoring. I took it on the chin and thougth i could step it up on Sunday morning with my own music that was all low to the ground technical 3d flying right infront of yourself. Warrick and i where really excited about today as it determined weather or not we would make it into the finals, so for me it was like putting on my motocross helment and going to battle.

The flight went great with the majority of the manouvers hitting the beats and finishing the routine off with a nice inverted auto with a piro flip out at the end. I was now starting to feel extremely happy with the effort i had put in as it looked to have payed off out on the flight line. Warrick and i eagerly awaited the scores to see if we made the cut for to top 5. I along with Alan and Danny Szabo was sure that flight would have moved us up a lot in the points but to my utter amazement we had gone backwards to 9th overall for the flight which put us in 3rd overall for the fly offs.

By now i was really scratching my head as to what i needed to pull out of the hat to help make a comeback. We dropped set manouvers and our freestlye round from the first day and carried over the scores from our 2 flights to music to the final fly offs. The master put a large points waiting on set manouvers so when i found out they where droping the scores from them i was a little dissapointed as we did so well in the first ones.

All these thoughts went through my head for a few mins but typing them feels like it went on for hours. I was that fired up by now that tunnel vision was setting in as i was sitting down quietly planning in my mind how the flight was going to look. I was talking to JK about the scoring of the flights to music and what to try and change in my freestlyle to try and increase my results. His best words were to: “start mixing it up and do some less techincal stuff but use more of the sky in between my low hard stuff”. I wrote some manouvers down on paper for Warrick to call out during later on during the freestyle flight which would incorporate and break up the two types of flying styles.

The set manouvers round went extremely well i felt only making a elevation change during the start of the pirouetting tic tock. The K2.5 auto at the end was one of the best to date in both this and the last set manoeuvers round. Wazza and i where pumped at the end. Warrick filled the heli back up as we had the freestyle round to go not long after.

I decided to start off low and hard then peel off and do some fast and some high things. A nice pirouetting pitch pumping jack knife off the dip in the field i though would go down well and from the crowds response it seemed to pay off. Then into some death spirals and Kaos that was neatly on the deck. Pulling out from this i went into some stretched out low backwards firgure of 8’s trying to make them big so they weren’t all the same. From here i just started to change it over to doing the same manoeuvre but pirouetting the whole way through. With the wind in your face my eyes had dried up from concentrating so hard and as i took a blink my right contact fell out into my sunglasses. Straightaway the heli became a blurry image and i couldn’t see what was going on that well. At such a low height i couldn’t manage to pull the heli out with pitch as i wasn’t sure where the tail was. It hit the ground shortly after with only about 35 seconds left of the flight, it landed in much the same place as Curtis’s did when he smoked his in a few years back at the Masters.

As quick as you could think things where going perfect it’s amazing how fast they can change. The end result netted a 4th place finish in our first ever international event and a lot of new faces and friends. Which is what makes our sport so enjoyable.

Its just coming up 2:00am in the moring here in England so i had better get some sleep.

Thanks Warrick for all your help at the Event, your support has meant the world.

Seems like arcHeli is down right now for some reason, so I will update everyone here.

Just got word from Warrick in the UK that Nigel has completed his freestyle flight and it kicked arse! I think current results still has Nigel as a very close 2nd place in Expert but there are a couple of flights still to happen.

Hopefully we should know the final standings in about 2 hours.

Darren

These pics are from yesterday when we went down the road to get the helis dialled in before heading up to Northampton.

Hi All,

Yesterday was a busy day as I needed to test fly the Synergy on the 35Mhz gear and to make sure the humidity and heat was not going to affect the performance of the engine. The guys at Skyline looked after us and showed us a local field which was fantastic.

We arrived at 3D Masters in the afternoon, and helped out the guys from Skyline to get their marquee setup and had a chat with Curtis Youngblood. After the marquee was assembled everyone headed up to the practise field at 6pm for an evening of practise flying, bbq and some well deserved drinks!

The Synergy N9 was offically released for sale today, Bobj at Skyline models has pallets of N9 kits which we brought a few up for the masters. Nearly all of the kits are pre sold which is great and a few other vendours here also have kits for sale.

This morning saw all of the competitors registering their radio’s and attending a brief pilots briefing before the Set Manouvers for the Experts class began. I was the fifth flyer in Experts class and overall my flight went pretty well. The manouvers were “Tumbling Circuit, Rainbow Twister Bouncy Castle, Big Ben, Piro Global, Piro Wall of Death, Piro Vertial Figure of 8, Piro Tick-Tocks, K2.5 Auto”. My final manouver the K2.5 Auto went really well until the flip (it’s a piro, full aileron roll, roll to inverted, flip out, and land backwards infront of you). When I pulled the flip I gave it a tad to much pitch which bleed the head speed of, luckily I managed to bring the head speed backup and land the heli still.

A couple of guys were unlucky and suffered a couple of crashes but the level of flying has been absolutely fantastic.

I will post the results of today as soon as they come out.

Cheers

Hi Guys,

Yesterday arvo we arrived at heathrow airport where Bobj was there to pick us up along with Jason Krause and Peter Novotny. We all loaded into Bob’s yellow van and headed out to Skyline models, which is his hobby shop. Jas and Peter where in the back sitting on the SKB cases while wazza and i was in the front being keeped amused at the english mph speedo which was sitting on the 100 sign during the hwy leg.

Once we arrived at Skylines Jas got hold of a foamie to beat up on out the front, between the cars and the powerlines it was extremely amusing this thing didnt get detonated in the first mins. Oh thats right the first hand lauch didnt get airborne due to the prop cleaning up Neil’s hand . The passing motorists where in shock to see the foamie flying around, we didnt quite have the down leg speed to keep up, but the aeros around the power lines where priceless. Eventually the 9 lives of the foamie were up and our old friend the power line took her prisoner . a little more ZAP and she should be good to go again.

Both N9’s are built up, its 8:30 now in the morning, just waiting for Bob to come grab us from the hotel to get the helis and go out this morninng for a few test flights. The weather is a little humid so hopefully switching to the 30% nitro while I’m over here might give us the same sort of power as 20% back home. Around lunch time we will be heading off to Northampton which is about an hour and a halfs drive from where we are now.

Tomorrow lunch time the masters start, I’ll be up in the first section doing set manouvers, so ill keep you posted on how things go today and tommorow.

Cheers