Rapier Summit 2008, Brno-Medlánky

This year’s meeting of modellers who are addicted to free flight with models leaving smoky trails was organized on Brno Medlánky airfield together with M-min competition Openscale, same as the last year. The weather which was bad the whole week could not resist the beauty of prepared models and gave us ideal conditions for the weekend. Patron of rapier modellers, dr. Z arrived not just with his colleague, but mainly with the car full of explosives, I mean Rapier motors. So the flights could start.

The number of modellers was roughly the same as the last year. In spite of all advertisements and the fact that rapier motors for the event were provided free of charge by dr. Z, no new foreign modeller arrived. Unfortunately it’s a long way to Brno and it’s understandable that nobody will make such a long journey from America for a few flights. From the Czech modellers we missed both Petr Kolář and Standa Černý, from internet discussions I thought that this year there will be a lot new models, that did not happen, but some new ones appeared.

Martin XB-51 by Adama Jeník was the king of the event. It is built precisely according to Mike Stuart plan, only engine nacelles have a few stringers added. The twin made beautiful flights, stable, long, great, outstanding, I’m short of the words here ! Another new model was Mig-15 built and flown by Martin Huk. The design is his own, it comes from French peanut plan which is available on internet. Model flied just like the original, and Martin made many starts with it, I wonder how many flight hours the model already has. And finally we can not say that it’s a new model, but Ruja, scared of the shame, prepared his Blohm & Voss BV215 (which was painted prior to the last year event) during the night before the Summit for trimming flights. Felda and Adam Jeník helped with trimming (many thank, guys) and Blohm made two beautiful flights. I have to pay myself a compliment. We are gathering more information about these models, including building stage photos, it will soon be introduced in rapier/models section.

Older models flew well as well, e.g. well established Flitzer by Viktor Lukáč or Swallow by the only foreign modeller Dennis Kollarits who also flew perfectly with his sport model.

During the flights there were unfortunately few motor burns. In one case it went well, Adam started his model so fast that the motor fell off and burned through on the ground, in the second case it was worse and Martin XB-51 twin was damaged. ISim’s Saab was lucky, I made one proxy start with it and find out after landing that tunnel cover is severely damaged.

But we made many great flights, all attendants received nice diploma at the end and I’m already looking forward the next year. And now I have to run to my workplace to make some progress on my Flitzer.

[Ruja]

P.S. Photographs were made by me and Petr Pokorný.