Helifest begins
Heavy showers welcome the people
Not that bad actually, than the forecast was originally, but it is not too ideal either so far. Moderate weather was mixed up with few showers on Friday. The Weston Park Model Air Show started this morning, pilots, companies and visitors are all arriving.
Today is more about getting everything ready for the weekend, so the tents are being set up, whilst the training is happening at the flight line. Goblin Kraken, Logo, Soxos helis are flying in the rain as long as the pilots can cope with the volume of the raindrops. Then short break is coming. The field is like a marsh, funny to walk, or drive a car. Wearing rubber boots is required.
Camping spots are filling up, it is not exaggeration, but hundreds of campervans are parked already. Personal experience: we have lost our car, and it took us about 30 minutes to find it in the torrential rain. Remember well, where you parked to avoid similar, really inconvenient experiences.
Marius Gehle, Kyle Dahl, Raquel Bellot, Yan Müller, Gabriele Rovere, Dunkan Bossion and few others have arrived already, others are coming until tomorrow morning. Many of UK pilots are arrived now, like Paul and George Isaacs, Alex Hawtin, Petrus Bothma, Rachel Plant, the entire Team Heli-Shop.co.uk, The scene is like an ant hill, all about the preparation for the weekend.
Saturday programmes
Tomorrow is the real first day of Helifest containing competition, demo, open fun fly sessions.
- 0900 Pilot briefing
- 0930 Competition - Inters class
- 1045 Demos
- 1115 Open Fun Fly
- 1215 Demos
- 1245 Competition - Sport class
- 1400 Demos
- 1430 Competition - Pro class
- 1530 Demos
- 1615 Open fun fly until 1930
This is the timetable for tomorrow, however it can change during the day depending on the weather.
Competition pilots
There are three classes at Helifest: Sport, Inters and Pro. The pilots of these classes in flying order:
Sport class
- Alan Robinson
- Stephen Boardman
- Andy O'Leary
- Mick Platts
- John West
- Gábor Szalontay
- Mike Francis
- Pawel Pietruk
- Nick Stroud
- Rory Mac Sweeney
- Thomas Edwards
Inters class
- Ricardo Smith
- Bill Gwinnett
- Mike Revuke
- Jim Saunders
- Ivan Adams
- Duncan Khan
- Summer Fisher
- Rachel Plant
- Dean Tamsett
Pro class
- Duncan Osbourn
- Simon Hildrew
- Dave Fisher
- Aaron Cole
- Ethan Williams
- Callum Henson
- George Isaacs
- Alex Hawtin
- Stuart Smith
- Mariusz Jastrzembski
We also expect to see soXos Strike 7, Mikado Logo and Goblin demos, XLPower demos and many more brands and companies, and we are excited to see the brand new Tarot 550/600 flying first time ever in real life. And we were told, one more premier is expected... from Egodrift.
Stay tuned... more to come...
