Greenacres Fly In

Photo: Richard Sunderland

The weekend 25-26 June 2011 marked the occasion of the Greenacres Model Aero Club Fly In. A fly In is basically an opportunity to visit another club, meet fellow fliers and to have a fly at their field in a relaxed club sort of way. The chaps at Greenacres are very good at it too - very organised but friendly and welcoming about it.

Photo: Chris Bott

I've thought I'd like to attend one of these for some years and the meeting of Charity Mass Build 2011 Webbits for a mass fly at the fly in was more than enough to draw me to this immensely popular & successful event. I built my webbit to carry a SLEC bomb release and bomb. The nose of the bomb is filled with flour so that when the bomb is released it dives downwards, splits open on impact and releases a cloud of flour. It works a treat. I'd like to show you some photos but I was too busy flying to take any at the time! However one of those jolly good chaps at Greenacres, Chris Bott has kindly let me have some of photographs shown on this post so thanks go to Chris for those.

I should add that I had the opportunity to speak to Steve Webb himself and he was able to tell me that so far we have raised almost £600 - I think we will pass that when the final count is done.

Photo: Chris Bott

You may ask "how different can it be visiting another field after all it's the sky we fly in"? Well at my club you could almost throw a stone to the nearest row of trees opposite the landing strip and landing from the west involves flying in between two other trees. There's a few others not far away too and trees are like magnets to these aeroplanes. You get used to it though. At Greenacres, which is on the site of the old Aldridge Airport, there are trees out at the edges of the flying area that are so far away they are no concern at all. Flying in all that open space - it's a huge difference!

There's lots of photos and videos of the event to be found at the modelflying website forum which is the online home of RCM&E magazine and has sponsored the event.

Here's one of the videos by Steve Webb: