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This years Indoor Duration Nationals were held for the first time over 3 days in the 37ft high WW2 hangar at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire.  

An excellent attendance combined with brilliant weather conditions made for very competitive flying, along with a healthy fun flying atmosphere.  

With an overwhelming positive response from all of those attending the Indoor Technical Committee will attempt to build on this format for 2009. 

Please see the attached for full list of results. indoor-nats-2008mb.pdf revised 23/09/08

A full report will be forthcoming within the BMFA News

In the F1C power class, team GBR have won the Team Silver medal! 

Alan Jack (7^th) and Stafford Screen (9th) made the fly-offs while Peter Watson (12^th) just missed, dropping a mere 8 seconds in 22:00 minutes flying time over seven flights. 

In F1A (glider) both Chris Edge (18^th) and Mike Cook (19^th) made the fly-off while
Peter Williams dropped 30 seconds to place 49^th.  The Team made 5^th place – top of the teams who didn’t get all three into the fly-offs - the standard at these events is very high indeed! 

In F1B (
Wakefield - rubber powered) our luck was out.  Russ Peers dropped 20 seconds to place 33^rd, Peter Martin dropped 27 seconds to place 36^th and Ray Jones dropped a total of 83 seconds over two flights for 55^th.  Ray was 5^th in the World Champs in 2005 so we know he had a bad day here! 

The nine team members made a total of 63 flights, scoring 56 maximum scores and dropping an average of 24 seconds in each of the other 7 flights.  When they are not flying, team members are lift spotting or retrieving and had to work very hard in high temperatures over less than ideal terrain. 

But all were rewarded! 

Team GBR are thrilled to announce that they were declared winners of the Jack North Trophy for the overall best team at the European Free Flight Championships.  The Trophy was presented to the FAI by the BMFA about ten years ago in memory of Jack North.  Jack was a Croydon club member and famous Free Flight expert, who represented GBR four times between 1952 and 1967.  He appeared twice in glider and once each in rubber and power.  In his day job, Jack was a well known professional aerodynamicist.

Mike Fantham FSMAE

An individual Silver medal has been won by British Team member Nigel Bathe at the Space World Championships.

Nigel Bathe won the silver individual medal in the Boost Glider class at the recent Space World Championships in Lleida, Spain.  A member of the British Team a number of times, Nigel has always had the potential for a podium place and it is fitting that he should be the first ever British medal winner in this duration class*.  The particular space model he deployed was developed over the past three years by the British Team members who belong to FAIR, the BMFA Specialist Body for FAI Space Modelling, the only international competition category.

Nigel’s medal brings the number of individual podium places won at each of the last three Space Modelling Word Championships to three.

* I have been informed subsequently that Peter Freebrey FSMAE won the Boost Glider  individual silver medal at the 1972 World Championships and the Scale Altitude gold medal at the 1974 World Championships.  Apologies to Peter Freebrey and I am happy to set the record straight and to acknowledge that Nigel is following in famous footsteps.

The 2008 F1D Indoor World Championships have just taken place in a huge domed exhibition hall in Belgrade, Serbia.

The hall is over 90 feet high. The British team of Bob Bailey, Mark Benns and Derek Richards flew their fragile 22 inch wingspan rubber powered free flight models for 3 gruelling days in temperatures up to 39 degrees. Excellent support came from Peter Ing and John Shaw.

The competition is all about duration, with many single flights of over 30 minutes. Each flyer has 6 attempts and his 2 longest flights are totalled to produce his individual score. The 3 scores from each country are added together in the team event. Although the American team were clear winners, the British total of 3:14:52 was enough to secure Silver medal position, ahead of the Hungarian flyers.

In the preceding Open International contests, Mark Benns won the 35 cm wingspan class, Bob Bailey was second while Peter Ing came 4^th and John Shaw 5^th.

Nick Aikman. GBR Team Manager.

The British F2A Speed Team, consisting of Peter Halman, Paul Eisner and Ken Morrisey, has once again taken the Team Gold Medal at the F2 Control Line World Championships in Landres, France. Their combined speed was 881.8 k.p.h. beating Hungary’s 863.9 k.p.h. into second place, by 17.9 k.p.h. with Italy’s 863.6 k.p.h. in third place.

This is the 12th consecutive year of World & European Championships that the speed team have taken the gold medal, an unprecedented achievement by any team in any category of model flying anywhere in the world.

Peter Halman was placed fourth with a best flight of 295.8 k.p.h. using the “Halman Special” Irvine engine. The contest was very close as he was only 0.1 k.p.h. from third place, and 0.5 k.p.h. behind the winner. Ken Morrissey placed sixth with a speed of 294.7 k.p.h. with Paul Eisner placed tenth with a speed of 291.3 k.p.h.

In F2B Aerobatics, Robert Kitley placed forty third, Barry Robinson placed forty fourth and Roy Cherry was fiftieth. The overall team placing was thirteenth.

All three F2C team team race teams were hopeful of making the semi-finals but with a cut off time a very fast 3 minutes 11.4 seconds it was going to be a very tough task. In the end, Mike Fitzgerald and Mark Thomason finished fifteenth with a fastest time of 3 minutes 15.5 seconds, Rob Leeman and John Broadhead were twenty first with a fastest time of 3 minutes 22.5 seconds and Malcolm Ross and Gordon Yeldham were twenty eighth with a fastest time of 3 minutes 29.5. As a team they were placed sixth.

Finally, in the F2D Combat category, Mervyn Jones placed eighth, Mike Whillance was twentieth with the team placing ninth.

John James