Nationals 2014

  From a very wet and frustrating Saturday to a tricky fun and fast Sunday that got

us to 10 rounds I think.  Thanks have to go to the organisers, John Edison Martin and their team at fantasy weather.com – you just can’t change the weather.  Or friends from Scotland enjoyed possibly their last visit to the nats!

  The southerly bowls at the HoH is one where I don’t think I’ve ever had a great deal of success and with a real lack of practise I couldn’t keep up with the consistency of the big lads.

  The Willow 2 really showed me that as well as it’s excellent construction quality it responds to good air on the course and accelerates fantastically.  I know my thumbs let me down and this was shown by my ability to miss the miles of heather and find a dirty great rock on landing.  My set up tweaks had to wait and the Merlin launched.  The Merlin has to be one of the most fun and fastest model’s I’ve flown so it was no hardship to be flying it.

  Looking around the pits on Sunday I was reminded of the 2009 nationals on the same slope.  A field dominated by Skorpions and the first Freestylers.  In Similar conditions 5 years on, not a scorpion on sight.  It felt that the models were going faster and there are certainly more pilots going faster, there are certainly more pilots going much much heavier.  Ballasting was a tricky one if you weren’t EMing, the air’s buoyancy did seem very variable.

  Bucking the trend and really showing that it’s about maximising the model you have was Mike Shelim and his Sting, 6 years of racing with a second hand model and he still achieved 17^th place only just 1 behind Richard Bago, who would race his Freestyler when Dave Wright wasn’t looking and one of his Needle’s when Dave lookedJ.

  The Thuroly good Greg gave us another picture for the collection of Dark lord at the nationals.  With so many summer races it's good to have the chance to see some old friends.

  Styles may have changed but those pilots best able to put the model where they want still came to the top- congratulations to Mark Redsell on his overall win- the own design category was easy!