Park Hall Heicopter Club AGM 3rd December 2008

We will be holding our AGM on the 3rd December at the Lion Hotel Belper which is on the A6 Bridge Street, the post code for the Lion Hotel is DE56 1AX. The meeting will start at 7:30pm, and we hope to see you all there. 

Park Hall Scale Helicopter Fly-In, 12^th October 2008

Having cancelled the fly-in once because of bad weather and then trying to re-organise around other scheduled events, our club members were all watching the weather forecast carefully with fingers and toes crossed for good weather. The forecast looked good but on the Saturday we were met with cold drizzling rain and gusty winds as we erected the gazebos and organised the flying lines.

 Nobody mentioned the dreaded word ‘cancellation’ and we were all up and out early Sunday morning making our way to the field. The initial signs were not good, thick fog, damp atmosphere and driving with headlights on. Too late to rearrange now, we started work finishing the field and stocking the food caravan when the sun started to break through and by 10.00, it was brilliant sunshine and little or no wind.

 Our first prayers had been answered, we just now needed the helicopters. People started to arrive in dribs and drabs and then by 11 o’clock we suddenly realised that the field was busy and it turned out to be one of the best attended scale flying days for many years.

 Many familiar names and faces were in attendance but also many new people, young and old joined the activities. Some were there just to watch but many were there to listen and learn from the old hands.

 As always, the friendly nature of helicopter flyers prevailed and no-one had a bad word to say about the event.

 The standard of helicopters on display was stunning and occasionally there was a lot of talking and not much flying but again this seems to be typical of helicopter pilots.

 The Club Chairman, David Smith always provides two trophies for our fly-ins, one for best flight and one for best helicopter. The best flight was awarded to Gary Wilson who flew his Cobra in a most un-scale like manner but thrilled everyone, the whole field just stood and watched in amazement.

 The best heli trophy went to Darren Swales for his highly detailed EC135 with jetcat turbine, a true work of art and difficult to distinguish from the real thing. The detail is incredible and this helicopter must have taken many hours of hard work but must also give a true sense of satisfaction once finished.

 Park Hall club members manned trannie control and as always a few visitors have left without handing back their tags! Members wives manned the food tent and did a roaring trade all day and the raffle had 23 prizes including a scale fuzz donated by Hightorque and a CSM gyro from Ripmax. Mike Kendell was the official ‘club photographer’ and took some stunning shots on the day, more pictures on our website www.parkhallheli.org.uk

 We raised over £180 on the day which combined with the money raised at the pod and boom flyin earlier this year takes us well over £500 which will be donated to the local air ambulance service and Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, both worthy causes.

 A big thank you to club members and their partners for their hard work but the biggest thank you is to the people who attended. Many drove hundreds of miles to attend and made the day special and the kind words and acknowledgements we’re received makes it all worthwhile.

Bob Radford

Park Hall Helicopter Event Co-Coordinator

Club Fly-In 10-11 May 2008

Our first ever 2 day club fly-in for mainly pod & boom/3D was a great success!

We had fabulous weather all weekend which encouraged lots of visitors, both flyers and spectators. An event like this can only happen with some great teamwork from club members, and we must specially mention Dave, PG, Robert, Barry, Cress and Roy for all their work in organising and preparing the field ready for the weekend.

Throughout the weekend we had many 50 sized helis which are very popular – especially the Trex 600 both electric and nitro - but also some 90 size such as Synergy's, Vibe 90 and Raptor 90's. Some of our members also dusted off some of their scale models and gave them a few flights over the weekend.
Paul Lison - who’s a member at Park Hall - demonstrated his flybarless Synergy, on the Sunday, with some great flying including some enormous normal, inverted and backwards loops.

As usual, our members’ wives & partners did a fantastic job of catering for the crowds along with encouraging everyone to dig deep and buy raffle tickets. We would like to thank the wives of Robert, Barry, Roy and John for all their work over the weekend.

Our raffle was drawn on Sunday afternoon and we had a total of 31 great prizes.
We would like to say a big thank you to the sponsors of our event, who provided the following raffle prizes:

Our club chairman, Dave, provided two trophies for the event, for best helicopter and best flight of the weekend. Best helicopter went to Chris (aka Norris) for his JR Vibe and we know he’ll now spend all his time polishing it rather than flying it!
Best flight went to Matthew Brown, who did some amazing flying for someone so young. So well done to Matthew and Chris.

There are some pictures of the weekend in our gallery with more on the way.

It was a great weekend and we certainly hope to repeat the format next year. In the meantime we’re now planning for our scale day on Sunday 7^th September.

Finally we would like to thank everyone who attended and made the weekend so enjoyable, and most importantly helped us to raise £377 which we will be donating to local charity following our September event.

Pre Fly-In Meeting 20th April!

We will be holding a meeting to discuss the May Fly-In up at the flying field on the 20th April.

We would like to see as many members as possible, so we can get everything organised and ready...!!!

Hope to see you there.

NEW Members Rep Appointed!

Robert Radford has now taken over the role as Members Representative from Chris Saxton. Good Luck and hopefully you want have to many people moaning in your ear...

My first request Robert is can you sort the weather out please mate....!

Thanks Robert

NEW Safety Officer Appointed!

Pete King has taken up the role of Safety Officer in place of Paul Graham. I'm sure Pete will keep the same safety standards as Paul, so please help him to make our club a safe place to fly! We wish Pete all the best in his new role.   

Thanks Pete

NEW Events Co-Ordinator Appointed!

Paul Graham has stepped forward to become our new events co-ordinator, leaving his old role as safety officer. We wish Paul all the best in his new role, and look forward to this years events.   

Thanks Paul!

Minutes from AGM

Items discussed and agreed at the AGM on 5th December:

Club membership fee to remain at £25 for adults, and free for juniors.

Cut-off for membership renewals to be 14th January. Secretary to contact anyone still to pay early in the New Year as a reminder.

Slight increase to total adult membership number to 35.

Potential new members must have 3 introductory flight days before any acceptance of membership.

Flying hours to be as follows all year round:

Monday No IC models. Electric only except Bank Holidays when Sunday flying times apply.

Tues – Friday 11:00 – 20:00 or dusk whichever earliest

Sat & Sun 11:00 – 18:00 or dusk whichever earliest

NO NIGHT FLYING!

The owner of the flying site at Woodlinkin is retiring, and we no longer have use of this site.

Reminder to all members they must check their channel number is free, and call out their number before switching on transmitters.

The meeting agreed to organise a 2-day pod & boom fly-in for 10th/11th May, and a 1-day scale fly-in for 7th September – further details of these events to follow.

The Chairman presented the Chairman’s cup to Mick in recognition of his enthusiasm in helping with the car-park extension, club hut facilities, housing for the generator and countless other tasks he has carried out over the year – and not least for bringing his son Adam who makes a great cup of coffee!

 

BMFA Membership Rates for 2008

The BMFA have now released their membership fees for 2008 and are as follows:

Senior Member: £28

Junior Member: £11

We will be discussing our own membership fees at the AGM and will inform you of any changes in due course.

WELL DONE!!

We managed to raise a massive £218 for High Dependency Unit at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary at our September club fly-in! Let's hope we can keep building on that next year.

a BIG thank you to everyone who donated on the day.

Click HERE for a pick of the cheque being handed over.

WELL DONE!!

We managed to raise a massive £358 for the Air Ambulance at our May club fly-in! The best total yet, let's hope we can keep building on that next year.

a BIG thank you to everyone who donated on the day.

The Chairman's Cup

Our new club chairman Dave Smith has decided to have a trophy cup made which will be awarded to a member of the club on an annual basis for their achievements through out the year. The cup can be awarded to anybody and it could be for many reasons, maybe you've been learning to hover and you've finally cracked it! Or maybe you've just managed to nail that new 3D move you've been trying out! Or maybe you've spent all year building a mint scale model! There are no hard and fast rules, the cup will be awarded to the person the Chairman thinks has personally achieved the most throughout the year.

Club Fly-In 20th May 2007

The club fly-in was a big success! The weather was great and more to the point plenty of people turned up. A big thank you to all the members who came Saturday to help get things ready and for turning up early on Sunday to finish off.

Things were a little tense first thing in the morning because by the time Tx control had opened at 10am there were only a few people on site, but as the morning progressed more and more people turned up, Dave had plenty of phone calls from people wanting directions, so we were very confident plenty of people would show. By 12pm the field was filling nicely and some very nice heli's had turned up, the flight line was busy and everyone was getting a flight or two in. We had some very nice smooth scale flying, as well as some stick bashing 3D and some smooth F3C, so the full monty of flying really. Just the one mishap where a ball link popped off on a raptor, quite a lot of damage but it will live to fly again another day! I think we had most types of heli on the day, plenty of scale plus 30's,50's,60's and 90's it was an eclectic mix and made for excellent viewing. we also started to see the rise of the electric heli with quite a few T-Rex 600's as well as 450's and a few others.

The raffle was drawn at 4:30pm, well done to all the winners! Bad luck to Dave who brought about 10 strips but didn't win..!! (Hee, hee) it's all for charity so he didn't mind. After the raffle we gave out the trophies for Best Flight and Best Heli, well done to the guys who were presented with those.

All in all it was a fantastic day and we hope to repeat it in September when we have our next fly-in! Thanks again to everyone who turned up and made it a fantastic day.

We have currently raised £250 for the air ambulance with more money on the way, we are hoping to break the £300 mark.

Pictures of the days events can be found HERE