RC Laser Northern District TT at Fairhaven Lake

RC Laser TT at Fairhaven Lake © Eric Craven

RC Laser TT at Fairhaven Lake © Eric Craven

RC Laser TT at Fairhaven Lake © Eric Craven

Fairhaven Lake and the Blackpool and Fylde Boating Club was the pleasant location for the Laser guys. On arrival it was nice to see that at least 10 cars were already parked up along the roadside as there may have been some confusion to the location and date, and this had also been delayed due to water treatment.

Nice blue fresh looking water and great weather greeted us all. Also not to be overlooked were some brand-new very large fluorescent pink buoys. Nobody could now mistake course layout, as they were very visible and clearly marked with large black numbers.

This was probably our first time here in over a year, so a nice change.

Eleven skippers were preparing for battle and Tony had decided to bring along another new toy to try out on a boat, an FPV camera unit. This is something that he had knocked up the day before, a small 25mw camera housed in a waterproof casing adapted to go on the boat along with his Skyzone googles. A quick try before the racing began proved to give great results. Any one unaware to what 'First Person View' is, it's an onboard view as if you were really there while still being on the lakeside.

On to the racing and a normal triangle was to be used of 2 laps with Trevor along with a Blackpool and Fylde member to help with the recording of results. C rigs were used until lunchtime as it seemed a little stronger than what was actually forecast.

Dave Fowler was running the show and was the one to be leading the way for most races unless John Sharman managed to sneak in a couple.

A lengthy lunch hour was had after 6 races and a few other guys were able to have an onboard view of the FPV. Doubtful to whether we would ever use these for RC Laser racing but certainly good for a play with. The problem would be in knowing what was going on around you. There are actually facilities to have head tracking for surround view on the 'Skyzone' but would need onboard tilt and pan. Probably better for speedboat racing with just a couple of guys. This system could be also used for someone that wasn't too mobile on their legs.

Back to the afternoon's sailing and most had gone straight for the B rig as it looked as though the wind was dropping, or was it? There was a bit of nose diving and the ones that seemed to be struggling were those that hadn't quite the correct sail setting. Everyone made it through to the end giving us a total of 12 races.

Fairhaven Lake is great for sailing with really good facilities. An ideal promotion platform for this class of hobby as you have a constant audience passing by. A bit of a mixed bag of comments from 'how much do they cost' to 'what powers them'...

Overall Results: (top five)

1 Dave Fowler (Blackpool & Fylde)
2 John Sharman (Burwain S.C.)
3 Rob Wheeler (Blackpool & Fylde)
4 Ewan Kirkbride (Fleetwood MY&PBC)
5 Peter Isles. (Fleetwood MY&PBC)

Thanks to Rob Wheeler and his Blackpool and Fylde Boating Club crew for the smooth running of this event.

The full results can be found on the Fairhaven website.