Heathcote Soaring League

Heathcote Soaring League (HSL) is a radio controlled glider club, based at Maddens Plains, 58 klms south of the Sydney CBD. HSL is involved in slope soaring, thermal duration, aero-tow and scale soaring.

We welcome new members whose primary interest is to fly radio controlled sailpanes, electric sailplanes or oldtimer models. We do not encourage Sports power models to fly at the Club site. Pilots who wish to fly power models, will be directed to one of the many Clubs in the region, who specialise in power flying, and whose club flying fields and operating procedures have been developed specifically for that purpose. HSL strongly encourages all members to achieve a competency level equivalent to LSF Level I. Speak with, or contact, one of the committee members to get an LSF accomplishment form and perform the tasks, to gain your level 1 competancy. We have Glider Instructors, who can instruct and test pilots for the Gold and Bronze wings, Glider, awards. MAAA membership is required to fly at Maddens Plains.

Membership fees are due now. Payment must be in before 1/7/11. If you haven't renewed your Club membership for 2011 - 2012, or are not a member, then you are not permitted to fly at the Club field. The land is leased to HSL Inc and is private property, for the use of members and guests. You must have current MAAA affiliation and Public Liability Insurance to fly at Maddens Plains. There is a .pdf renewal form or a membership application form for dowload, on the 'Club' page of this website.

Hi everyone.
We had 26 pilots compete in the Millennium Cup round held at Queanbeyan on Sunday, April 1.
The weather forecast was for partly cloudy skies in the morning with light winds early in the morning building to 20km/h around midday and scattered showers developing in the afternoon. This is just how it turned out with temperatures in the mid to low 20s.
We had three pilots competing in the Millennium Cup competition for their first time. They are Brian Lewis, Marciek Rucinski and Phillip Whitehouse. Welcome guys.
The wind was light for the first few rounds and built up gradually. We got three rounds completed before we broke for lunch at 12:30. After lunch the sky quickly clouded over and a heavy rain cell passed to the west. However towards the middle of round 5 the wind picked up to be very strong and then rain came over the field necessitating a halt to flying operations. We sheltered under the awning of the QMAC clubhouse and after about 30 minutes the rain had stopped and the wind had eased off somewhat. So the last few pilots were able to complete their flights and we completed 5 rounds for the day.
The Queanbeyan field provides some unique challenges. Due to it being in a cow paddock the club have erected a perimeter electric fence to keep the cattle off their runway. The stakes that support his electric fence are hammered about 1m into ground which prevents their removal. These stakes caused continuous issues with the operation of the parachute retriever but we managed to work around this. Thanks to those that performed those line clearing duties. The landing area was also quite restricted in area due to these stakes on both sides. I don't think that anyone actually hit any of these stakes during the course of the day.
We had a few aircraft bust wings on launch. There were a couple of built up aircraft belonging to new Millennium Cup pilots that failed when the wind strength increased and launch loads increased accordingly. A couple of composite aircraft wings also failed in the stronger wind conditions after lunch.
With the scores tallied the winner of the round is Colin Woodward. Jack Murphy was 2nd and Marc Ceo came in 3rd. Congratulations to the placegetters.
NOTE: The next scheduled round of the 2012 Millennium Cup will be held at Salt Ash on the 20th of May 2012.

Millennium Cup sponsors are -
Model Flight
Traplet Publications

For an overview of the rounds held in the

2011 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

2010 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

2009 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

2008 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

2007 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

2006 Millennium Cup Series, click HERE.

Club Thermal Duration Competition

Hi everyone.
Round 3 of the 2012 Heathcote Soaring League Club Championship was held on Sunday 6th May.
On arrival at the field there was a brisk westerly wind blowing and it was quite cold. We had an initial entry list of twelve pilots, but some were just testing or indicated that they were unable to be there all day, so we used the 4, 6, 8, 10 and 10 minute target times with all flying to be completed by 2:30pm.
The sky was clear and sunny and by midday the wind had dropped as forecast and it had warmed up to be t-shirt weather. The wind remained out of the west and was cycling between light to dead calm. In the time from 11am to 1pm some very large thermals developed in the vicinity of the field. After 2pm there were long periods when the wind was from the NW adding a down wind component to the launches.
I think the sole unfortunate incident of the day happened to Jack Murphy. Jack had converted a model to new 2.4GHz radio equipment. He had failsafe programmed to deploy half flap. On the first test flight of the day the failsafe was activated a few times so Jack landed and adjusted the antenna placements in the model. On a second test flight the aircraft was flying nicely and not too far away when a few minutes into the flight it appeared to go completely off the air and spiralled to the ground. The model was heavily damaged but Jack is of the view that most of it is repairable.
Colin Woodward took out the main honours for the day with Andrew Simpson in second place and Fred Lodden third. Congratulations to all.
NOTE: Round 4 of the 2012 HSL Club Championship will be held on the 26th of August. See you there. Good luck to all the HSL members travelling to Jerilderie in June for the LSF event.

The current standings for the Club Competition, can be seen by clicking on this link

Andrew Simpson's new, Joe Wurts designed, Maxa comes in at 3.9m wingspan.

Hi everyone.
Well the 2012 Heathcote Cup has been run and the weather was quite pleasant overall for the weekend.
On Saturday on arrival at the field there was a brisk westerly blowing which meant cross wind launches so we took our time setting up hoping the forecast abatement would prove true. Finally, proceedings got underway around 10am with 13 competitors (12 open class and one 2 metre). We flew with 3 heats per round meaning there was 4 or 5 in each heat.
The first couple of rounds had very testing conditions with a lot of out landings and short flight times. Around 11:30am conditions improved and the wind started to abate. Everyone was starting to find the thermals and it came to down landing ability. We finished flying around 3:15pm having completed 6 rounds. Apart from a few minor incidents (excluding Max) everyone went home with models intact.
Results for the day placed Mitch Todd in first followed by Matt Lowe and Alan Lowe. Max Stone won the 2 metre as he was the only entrant.
On the Sunday there were 15 competitors (12 Open class and 3 2metre) so we ran the heats with 5 pilots in each heat. The wind was from the south and straight down the winch lanes.
Despite the prediction of light winds, due to the thermal activity, at times the winds got up to 15km/hr so you need more than one thermal to make your time or you needed to go along way down wind and hope you could come home. I know because on 2 occasions I went too far and didn't get back and got pumped in the scores.
The thermal activity continued after the lunch break right through to the end of flying. We flew 7 rounds and finishing around 3:30pm. Again there were a couple of incidents on the day but no significant damage and everyone took home their aircraft in one piece. Most notable was Peter Williams fluttering his ailerons on launch which snapped the servo horns on both aileron servos - luckily he deployed crow and landed inverted into the bush with no damage.
At the end of the day Mitch had again flown extremely consistently only dropping 5 points to the maximum all day. So Mitch Todd was first followed by Jack Murphy and Alan Lowe. First in 2 metre was Les Morris.
Winner of the Heathcote Cup for 2012 was Mitch Todd.
Thanks to the competitors from Newcastle and Goulburn who helped make the contest a success. Everyone had a good time and are keen to come back and have another go next year.
Alan Lowe

The results can be seen by clicking on this link

Just click on the picture to go to the calculator. Input your figures and 'presto'.