Mode Zero

A group of us , Phil, Tobe, Mike, Jonathan and myself went to the 2023 retro do on Saturday. Weather very sunny but the wind was something else. It was all of a couple of mph so not many long flights but plenty of walking down the hill with the occasional few mins if we caught a thermal. Went back on Monday and it was great. 20-30 mph and plenty of flying. Phil showed us how it's done with his single channel Moonbeam 2 with an OS Pixie for steerage and managed some inverted with his Impala on reeds. A number of locals turned up including Mike Shellim, remember him? If you had a Multiplex 3030 / 4000 he wrote a superb programming manual for them and has done the same for open tx now. I didn't get any pics but I believe Jonathan did.

Boy it was HOT HOT HOT! It wasn’t till the intrepid MODE ZERO band had met up in the car park at 9:30 am did we realise nobody from the Ivinghoe Soaring association was turning up !
Wisely they have postponed the event till this coming weekend.
We had almost non existent wind from the east with the odd flurry of thermals coming through. That made us scramble for our gliders and launch into the dream of actually being able to fly ! As it happened we all got to fly a little but it was fabulous to meet up with my friends and hero’s Mike , Shaun Phil and Tobe . For Tobe who had travelled all the way from Sweden, this amazingly was his first slope soaring adventure!! ( Isn’t Sweden Hilly ?!)
I think we decided the oldest glider there was my late 70’s Micro Mold ‘Hite Finder’ that’s in flyable but crusty condition. A well aged and patinated Alula managed to stay up longest being so light .

Pics a bit bigger might be interesting to those who don't have access to 100x magnifying glass.......

Brilliant to see - looks like you all had a fantastic time.

These were from Saturday, the day of the event:

I wish I'd some video of the Moonbeam, four good long S/C flights on the Monday,
much to the bemusement if onlookers:

Sorry about the shadow, didnt notice it at the time... but then these are snaps not photographs


This was taken on Monday with a much better wind.
Ken, a seasoned local flyer, was curious about our retro kit and had a Reeds transmitter
thrust into his hands mid-flight... he did perfectly well!



Then at Old Warden the following weekend, the "Vic Smeed S/C Poppet Club"

Poppets are fantastic little flyers aren't they.