This is the third year that the LMA have had a fly-in at Luton and it was the best yet. The weather was much better than in previous years, although it was still blustery. This end of season event is getting more popular each year and we are, once again, grateful to the Vauxhall Model Club for giving us their very nice site. There were plenty of day visitors as well as approximately thirty caravans and motorhomes parked-up for the weekend. As last year, there was a marquee from which food and hot drinks were available. This was just perfect to recover from the cold wind between flights and to have a chat with friends. There was plenty of flying over the weekend. On Saturday the wind was particularly bad so, sensibly, sports models were mostly flown. On Sunday, particularly in the morning, a large variety of scale models were flown.

A series of photographs, taken over the weekend, showing some of the scale models can be seen below.

What is John Greenfield, the fly-in organiser, messing about with here? What is all that smoke from some sort of exhaust? All is revealed below.

It is nice to see large electric powered models within the LMA. This lovely specimen is a Spruce Goose owned by Tony Nijhuis. The 14ft semi-scale model uses 600 motors, ten sets of batteries and weighs 32lb. It would be very nice to see it fly off water. This hasn’t been tried with yet, although it is planned. The brave owner flew it on Sunday afternoon in quite strong winds. It got knocked around quite a bit and took some skill to control. On its second flight Tony successfully completed the LMA proficiency with it. A good tribute to his piloting skills and very well deserved.

This is Simon Steggall’s FW190. A fabulous 25% scale model powered by a Mackay 210cc, 5-cylinder radial engine. It looked and sounded superb.

Simon also flew this nice model of a Bell C47 helicopter. Not very many helicopters are seen in the LMA and a nice scale one is quite a rare sight.

Remember the first picture? Well here is what was going on. John is sitting in probably (hopefully!) the world’s only jet powered wheelchair. It uses a full-size jet engine starter to power it. There is no throttle control, no stearing and no brakes. There is only a fuel on/off value. This thing shoots across the runway and you shut it down when the “driver’s bottle goes”. Truly mad. At least if John had fallen off we would have had something to take him to hospital with.

Towards the end of Saturday’s flying, as the light levels fell, there was the usual flying of small electric models that are so popular these days. Something different was to see Glen Masters test flying Andrew Brown’s small Lightening. They had a bit of difficulty getting the small glow engines to run, but once they had succeeded and the model was given a good throw into wind it flew really quick. This is a model the pilot could certainly not take his eye off.

Here is a general view of the pits on Sunday afternoon. A good variety of models can be seen and plenty of grass to fly off.

An American Thunderbolt. That must mean some of the USAAF model team are here. They were well represented although this model actually belongs to Gregg Veasey. This was taken during his proficiency test, which I am glad to report he passed with flying colours.

This is a very nice 25% scale model of a Focker Triplane. This is one of several owned by Dave Horton. There is some really nice detail on this model. A top view illustrating some of this is shown below.