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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1542.PDF
FLIGHT, 10 August 1951 171 CAMPHILL IN RETROSPECT Further Notes on the Gliding Contests FOR the sixth time in the history of these contests, the Camphill,Great Hucklow, site of the Derbyshire and LancashireGliding Club was chosen as the venue for the NationalGliding Championships. (A preliminary report, and mention of the unusual result, appeared in Flight last week; other photo-graphs will be found on the preceding page in this issue.) Although there is usually some element of risk attached to thechoice of this site from the point of view of weather, this year, as in 1950, the decision proved a wise one; only on one day did theelements prohibit competition flying. Lying, as it does, on the backbone of high ground which runsdown the centre of England, Camphill is considered to be one of the most effective hill-soaring sites in Britain. It has two mainslopes, one to the west, known as Bradwell Edge, and a southerly slope, Eyam Edge. Both give good "beats" of about two miles andprovide smooth lift most of the time. Thermals are frequent but, because of the topography of the surrounding countryside, thermallift is often broken. In the past the site has proved itself excellent for competitionpurposes and this year was no exception. Thirty-three sailplanes and approximately 70 pilots took part in either team or individualclasses. Although, as the results indicated, the standard of soaring was high and several fine individual flights were made, perhaps themost notable feature was the magnificent performance put up by the new Slingsby Sky, for which a C. of A. was forthcoming onlythree days before the contests began. It is certainly a tribute to its manufacturers that this relatively untried sailplane should haveswept the board in the face of such formidable competition as that offered by the German Weihe. After several days of uncertainty, it was finally announcedlast Wednesday that the judges had agreed to accept F/L. "Jock" Forbes' claim to have reached the Flamborough Headturning-point, which thus gave him a four-point lead over Geoffrey Stephenson, personally accepted as the ^provisional winner. TheSky sailplanes flown by both of these pilofc ga^p-consistently tjetter The two leading protagonists in the struggle for typetionours were (above) the well-proven German-built Weihe and (below) Britain's newly certified Slingsby Sky. The latter proved victorious. The batsman gives his starting signals to the winch-operator and the great moment has arrived. In a few seconds the pilot will have to rely solely on his knowledge of the clouds to reach a distant goal. performances than did any other individual type. Weihes, pilotedby Lome Welch and Philip Wills, took third and fourth places. No fewer than 16 Eon Olympias took part, most of them flown byService teams. The week began well, with a busy practice day on July 21st.On the following day, Sunday, Stephenscn obtained an early lead with a 76-mile goal flight (to a destination chosen by the pilot)during which he reached an altitude of 12,400ft. On Monday, however, the cloud-base ruled out any hope of competition flying. Stephenson's Sky was again to the fore on Tuesday, winninga hard-fought 110-mile cross-country race from Camphill to Dunstable. His time was 2 hr 35 min, and he covered the distanceat an average of 42.6 m.p.h.; Forbes landed a minute later. Throughout the morning half of the competitors had beensoaring at low altitudes over Bradwell Edge in a north-easterly wind which made it impossible to climb higher because of a considerableamount of layer cloud. On Wednesday, Stephenson was the only one of 35 starters to reach the turning point in the 144-mile out-and-return race to Boston; on the return leg he made 18 miles. Thursday saw the longest "distance" of the whole meeting,recorded by Lome Welch in a Weihe. He struggled hard against awkward cross-winds to reach his chosen objective of Lympne,but failed by ten miles, finally landing at Manston airfield. All 01 the other competitors went in a northerly direction, only two ofthem making flights of more than 100 miles. The Weihe contingent again moved forward on the Friday, when Philip Wills achieved anexcellent 75-mile "distance" hop to Loughborough, Yorkshire. Saturday's task proved a difficult one, a strong and tricky head-wind preventing all competitors from completing the return leg from Boothferry Bridge, near Goole, 45 miles from Camphill. Ofthe 13 pilots who succeeded in getting there only David Ince and Philip Wills made any sort of distance on the return leg. Although at this stage Geoffrey Stephenson was still leading hewas unfortunate in having flown with an unserviceable barograph; without this piece of bad luck he would, undoubtedly, have gainedenough points to prevent Forbes from challenging his total. It was apparent, therefore, that the eventual winner was to be decidedentirely by the race held on the final day, and the early-morning prospect of excellent soaring conditions gave rise to an atmosphereof tense excitement among all competitors. The race was to Derby airfield and back, a distance of 60 miles. Twelve pilots completedthe course, Maj. A. J. Deane-Drummond of the Army Gliding Club getting away first and making the best time of 2 hr 10 min (anaverage of 27.7 m.p.h.). Stephenson was late in getting into the air and was unable tocomplete the return leg; only another seven miles would have won him the individual championship outright. Forbes, who has hadconsiderable experience of hill-soaring in B.A.F.O., had been plugging away in a steady if unspectacular fashion throughout thecontests, recorded a time of 3 hr 18 min for the race, thus earning himself sufficient marks to beat Stephenson at the post. *' Besides attaining third and fourth places in the Individualclasses, German-built sailplanes, an MU13 and a Meise (in the hands of the Goodhart brothers) succeeded in carrying off theteam championship. Certainly, from the competitors' viewpoint it was a most satis-factory week's soaring and a great encouragement for all whose energy and enthusiasm go to make these annual contests possible.
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