The day of the competition arrived, the rain was pouring and the wind was howling, typical! However the rain soon cleared and the sun came out, but the wind didn't relent and the competition went ahead as planned.

I was persuaded to give her a test flight before the judging, so I handed her over to Steve and Chris before turning my back, closing my eyes and covering my ears as everybody else looked on. Fortunately, the launch was drama free, and she required only a small amount of left aileron trim to keep her happy.

As part of the competition I was required to fly it as well, very daunting in the gale force wind, but Steve took her up and passed over to me. Simple circuits, a couple of loops and she was going relly nice, despite the wind. Time went quickly, and before I knew it, the engine went dead, out of juice I thought, went downwind a little then turned back to bring her in, but as I turned, she stalled into the wind, and I struggled to recover her as she spiraled down to mother earth with a bump nose first :(

Fortunately the damage was minimal, the stab struts had partly come adrift, pilot had come loose, knew I should have added seat belts and there was a crack along the right/top side of the cowl, nothing that a bit of cyano wouldn't fix. That was lucky, very very lucky!.

Shortly after, Mark lost his FW190, it was not a good day for jerry!

The judging of the competition was performed by the participants, each nominating their chosen first, second and third choices in the two classes of fun-fighter and scale.

When the results were announced, I was well chuffed to get first place in the fun-fighter category, thanks folks!

Follow up...At the 2002 summer display, it had a mid-air with a Mustang, breaking the nose section off in several pieces. It was re-assembled overnight for the second day and has provided many enjoyable flights ever since. I've been ever so tempted to tidy up the repairs, but am afraid of tempting fate! It flies very nicely and is very easy to handle and 'throw' around, now if only it had a bigger motor :)