Control Line

September 2006 was a very hectic month for control line flying. Beginning with the Nats in August, then the RAFMAA Main Champs the weekend of 9-10 Sep was the French World Cup event held at the excellent flying site at Piennes.  Mike North and I travelled out to the competition by car and the trip began with an early o’clock start in order to meet the 08:40 sailing from Dover.  The whole journey down through France was completely uneventful; it’s worth going to France just to drive on their uncluttered roads.  We arrived at the site at about 14:00, pitched the tent, nipped down to the supermarket for some supplies (Beer, wine, oh and some food!) and still had time for a practice session to make sure we had the models sorted out for the competition.  It is an excellent site with three hard circles and numerous grass circles. 

Racing began at 15:00 on the Saturday in warm but quite windy conditions.  This standard of competition is run in a very disciplined manner with a draw made for the heats and a timed practice period before each round.  A five-minute period is allocated to two teams at a time so that a setting for the day can be established.  We were in the first heat with first choice. We were flying against a German team and the current World Champions.  The race started well but at the first pit stop, the German failed to over fly our model and picked up the lines.  The meant a re-flight for both ourselves and the French, with a DQ for the German team. In keeping with tradition our re-flight was at the end of the round and we were first on in the second round too.  This meant that I flew two heats back to back.  We put in reasonable times in each (3:39.2 & 3:35.3) but it was quite tiring. 

The organisers had laid on a buffet banquet in the evening that was free for all those who attended the competition.  It was held in a function room about a mile from the site.  And a very peasant evening was had by all.  It is so good to see all the members of the club mucking in to serve the wine, clear tables and generally make the event memorable.  The Piennes/Landres site has been awarded the C/L World Championships in 2008 and there were a number of notice boards on display listing the responsibilities of the club members in preparation for the champs.  It was very interesting to see the coherent approach adopted by the club.

On the Sunday we had an early start with practice at 08:30 with racing beginning at 09:00.  We were in the third heat this time and it was much cooler that the previous day notwithstanding the change in conditions, we put in our best time of the comp (3:32.9) and thought that we had an outside chance of making the semi finals but it was not to be.  We got closer that last year but ended up 12^th overall.  At the top end of the table, there were some excellent times recorded and the current European Champions won the event beating the current World Champions into second place.  The final was a bit dull due to the Spanish team pilot dropping his handle at the first stop thus being disqualified.  A poor setting by the French team of Georges and Pascal Surugue gave the Ukranian team of Bonderenko/Lerner a relatively easy run in the excellent time of 6:23.8.

There followed the prize-giving ceremony where everybody that attended received something either a tee shirt or bottle of wine for the lower places right up to glass trophies for the podium places. 

We left about 19:00 for the drive back to the ferry port and again the journey was really straightforward with no hold ups, eventually arriving back at Alton at about 04:30 thoroughly knackered but happy with the trip.  This was well worth the effort and plans are in place to return next year if possible.

Chris Barker