Dennis excels at Scarf’s Fun Fly
What made it so interesting was the fact that electric and fuel powered planes competed together.
SCARF (South Coast Association of Radio Flyers) hosted the first round of the National Fun Fly for local flyers at the club’s field in Oribi. It is a national event where different clubs in the country enter and fly the same maneuvres in the same month, get scored and the results are sent up to Pretoria.
There are three rounds and the top 20 in South Africa will get invited to the National Fun Fly in October this year. All SCARF members took part in the sportsman’s class over 45. There were six events which proved to be more difficult than thought.
Event 1, Aircraft must perform one loop, one 360 degree horizontal turn and then one touch-and-go into the wind, as many as possible in two minutes. Dennis Steenmans excelled here with his mini stick with 9, Mike du Mollard very close with 8 and Jacques Grobler with 6.
Event 2, aircraft to climb for 15 seconds, perform five downward spins and land on runway. Nearest to 65 seconds is the winner. Dennis Colman and Jacques tied for first, one second off target with Mike in third (73 seconds).
Event 3, aircraft to perform one loop, two horizontal eights, three Cuban eights, four rolls and land into wind in the shortest time. Dennis only took 37 seconds to complete, with Jacques in second with 53 and Mike in third with 55 seconds.
Event 4, one loop and two rolls with as many sequences as possible in one minute; Dennis completed 11, Jacques 9 and Mike 8.
Event 5, limbo passes in two minutes. Limbo passes under a line two metres high and eight metres apart. Dennis completed 9, Mike 8 and Marius van Rensburg 7.
Event 6, spot landing. Touching down as close as possible to one metre spot. A crosswind made it quite difficult, but Jacques landed the closest with 1.9m from the spot, Dennis with 3.5m and Bert Strydom with 4.5m.
Lewis Colman and Kitty Steenmans were judges and are thanked for their time. Although no major damage was sustained, Lionel Charter’s plane was damaged after the first event, but was glued together and ready at the next maneuvre. Dennis damaged his plane’s landing gear and had to do the last maneuvre with a back-up plane.
Jacques enthralled everyone with his quad copter after the competition and a few people stayed to braai. All members are looking forward to the next event scheduled for June/July.
