Updated:05/09/2017

Purchased from Gliders UK some time ago this 3 metre span sail plane had been unboxed and the bits standing in the back of the garage.  The early 2015 weather being rather inclement at present I decided that I would make some more effort to get this glider put together.  Previously I had fixed the stabiliser and rudder fitted their servos and connectors and installed servos in the wings.  Although designated ARF this model is far from that!

You can either motorise it or make it slope only.  The white fuselage is really smooth grp and the wings are traditional balsa / ply, white film covered and the wings do pass the "squeeze" test well.  The squeeze test using thumb and forefinger tells you if it has plenty of ribs to support the balsa sheeting.  The hardware comes in various bags unmarked and the manual is non existent.  Just a parts list on a exploded plan.  Not a big issue if you have built scratch models before or had some experience of numerous ARFs.

After many years of procrastinating I'm finally building a Phase 5. Designed in 1978 this model is often considered to be Chris Foss's (CF) best slope model. It was never available as a kit so the only way to get one is to build it yourself. CF is still selling the plans if you fancy one.

The Phase 5 plan calls for a built up wing but I'm deviating from the plan and making one from foam with a balsa skin. A snow day today meant I could make a start. CF does not specify what sections are used for the root or the tip so a bit of guesswork and internet trawling resulted in the semi-symmetrical E374 for the root, modified a little to make it thinner. The tip is fully symmetrical and is between NACA 0010 and 0011. It's actually 10.67% thick so maybe it's NACA 0010.67?

Unusually for this time of year the temperature was quite mild at 10 degrees C.  Wind was forecast as 18 mph to 35 mph WNW so a few of us grabbed the chance for a bit of slope soaring with flying wings and gliders.  The wind  was really winding up around midday so when Mike chose to fly he used his scratch built Phase 5 a Chris Foss design from quite a few years ago. The Phase 5 has fully symmetrical wing profiles so is quite happy with wild winds.  An hour or so later the wind started to ease off so then Mike chose to fly his Orcrist, The Orcrist design is heavily influenced by the French 'Excalibur' design but uses a traditional wooden fuselage and foam wings. .Scratch built although this was in reality a re-maiden as earlier in the week it was involved in a collision with a Wild Thing. However, all repaired and now to find out if it still flies well. It does!

Low-Cost 600RES Competition.  Sunday 18th September. The final round of the 2016 season was held in superb thermal gliding conditions at Cashmoor, the Wimborne MAC flying site. After the pilots’ briefing the event got under way with eleven pilots taking part. The event consisted of five rounds with pilots flying against each other once in the Round Robin format.

All pilots elected to have some test flights and when Round 1 got under way expectations were high. The landing patch at Cashmoor is enormous and only one pilot landed out all day and then by only a matter of a few feet. Andrew Fellows and Jeff fellows started as they meant to continue with convincing wins. However, Bob Corfield easily outflew James Parry, Mike Sims and Chris Hague only to miss the landing patch by a small margin and score a resounding zero! Apparently, Bob’s newly fitted and untried spoiler was very efficient, hence the landing falling short of the runway. Bob did not make the same mistake twice!