This was Helifest 2025
Helifest 2025 just concluded. And it was a great weekend in the United Kingdom from many aspects. Can it be better? It can most likely, but it was a well organised, great event as usual, and it was even better than in the previous years from many aspects.
Also the weather was quite good throughout the weekend, or more specifically: it could be worse, and it was multiple times in the past, but this year the weather mostly coped with the event. Mostly.
Saturday afternoon we have got a 15-20 minutes long intensive rain, apart from that the weekend was mostly dry and more or less sunny, although there were few stronger gusts. This could be recognised in the number of crashes as well, a few happened, but there weren't too many. It's more important, there was no incident throughout the weekend, and apart from minor scratches and small injuries the medical assistance wasn't busy at the Helifest side of the Weston Park Model Air Show.
Many pilots showed up at the event this year, there were more than 60 pilots registered, and not just from the UK, from overseas as well. Raquel Bellot was flying at the event, although we could see her flying less this year than in previous years. And there were Robin and Pascal Lipke, Fabian Kloß (Kloss), Marik Wiechenstroth, Carl-Henning Siebert, Florian Neuner, from Germany, Matthew de Wilde, Jens van der Ploeg from the Netherlands, Andrei and Harald Tripolt from Austria, Filip Ban from France, Gabriele Rowere from Spain and the list goes on.
And some of the key characters of the worldwide heli scene representing brands attended Helifest, like Ralf Buxnowitz (Mikado Helicopters), Alex Liu (ManiaX), Vincent Offenbeck (Egodrift).
Also the number of visitors at Helifest was significantly higher than in the previous years. And this time not just Saturday was busy, even Sunday was popular among the spectators. There's a sensible improvement in the numbers.
A very sad event has left a significant mark on Helifest this year: one sponsor and retailer tent was different, mostly empty and not just because of the lack of the products, because a key character of the U.K. heli scene, Alessio Romeo, owner of Hely-shop passed away a week prior the event. This is why the Hely-shop tent was set as a tribute place for Alessio. Saturday afternoon members of Team Hely-shop held a farewell speech followed a minute silence then a demo by the team.
Also a sad occasion, the cancellation of Global 3D generated a very busy competition weekend at Helifest: one more class, the International class had to be squeezed in the timetable, consequently there were 4 classes this year: Sport, Inters, Pro and International classes. All four were very strong, really competitive groups, pilots had to fly by very high standards. And this year a new (new for Helifest) competition format was introduced, the Zone format-like competition: music flights only with strict scoring, better round counts system.
The following results concluded
Sport
- Ollie Thornley
- Christopher Brain
- Matthew Dukes
- Antónia Bogdán-Szabó
- Stanley Brain
- Mickey Bling
- Mike Revuke
- Joseph Bailey
Inters
- Luke Gittins
- Connor Henson
- Gábor Szalontay
- John West
- Peter Gray
- Kenneth Dickson
- Craig Stubbs
- Matthew Pressey
- Bill Gwinnett
- Peter Edmondson
- Mick Platts
Pro
- Ethan Williams
- George Isaacs
- Duncan Osbourn
- Callum Henson
- Benjamin Britton
- Adam Turner
- Stefan Simmons
- Hamish Morley
- John Nobbs
- Scott Mayo
- Ben Thornley
- James Carter
- Charlie Keeble
International
- Carl-Henning Siebert
- Marik Wiechenstroth
- Fabian Kloß
- Robin Lipke
- Matthew de Wilde
- Florian Neuner
- Jens van der Ploeg
- Pascal Lipke
- Andrei Tripolt
And "the most entertaining flight" trophy landed at Fabian Kloß
There were noticeable improvements: the toilet situation was a long ongoing problem at Helifest, it was one of the bad memorable marks of the event, but it can be reported now: this is over. There were more and finally not just portaloos, a proper mobile toilet was installed at the scene, and finally there were no queues at all. There was water, soap, toilet paper throughout the weekend, and all were mostly clean.
Catering was slightly better than last year, but there's still room to improve on that front.
However, the very tight schedule generated a new problem: fun fly times were cut back significantly, and there was no place or time to setup and test damaged then fixed helicopters.
In general the event showed a step up compared to previous years, and it's clear, this event has a future.
More pictures and videos to come in the following days
