Friday did not bode well! Saturday dawned bright in Balmain and a flurry of texts and phone calls showed it looked OK, even if not perfect, at Belrose. Among the texts was one from Mark Connor saying there was a “thick dog” where he was. So the Biplane Day was on and people headed to the field to find Ron Clark (“it was sunny half and hour ago”) and lowering clouds …… and boy did they lower!...click the read more button to see the full article

Following a brief pilot briefing from CD Mike Minty and Flight director David Pound then David Wilson fired up his little Ultimate (newly repaired from it’s bush exploring trip of a week ago) and it sped along the runway in a cloud of spray and flew. The landing was a classic of small wheels and wet ground – a nose-over.

Tom Sparkes had brought his venerable Fokker Triplane but with it’s narrow wheels there was no way it would get off so he flew his Pitts Special and that needed 2 attempts to fly, but fly it did. Ron Clark flew his Waco which looks very good in the sky and did a lovely touch down but again the water/mud combo flipped it over at the end of the run.

And still it kept raining. Jim Masterton had multiple motor problems and decided not to fly his Aeromaster while Doug Radford left his Tiger Moth in the car. But Grant Furzer got out an ancient possibly Skybolt, an ex-Baz, ex-David Foster machine and it flew well.

Which leaves us with just Clive Weatherhead to talk about. He brought a brand new 55” span ARF Ultimate with an APS 108 in it to run in and fly. The motor started and ran well but the test flight ……. Well let’s just say he has a lot of mending to do!

The pilots did the judging for places and produced:

1st David Wilson 2nd Tom Sparkes 3rd Grant Furzer

And then Jim (as last year’s winner) chose the recipient of the Biplane Trophy and it was Ron Clark.

So a wet and soggy day ended with smiles all round (apart from Clive) and we all went home for a nice mug of Bonnox.

And - for old time's sake, here's a photo from the 1999 Bipe competition: