THE HISTORY OF V.A.R.M.S The Annual Diary 1990 - 2009

61
Chris Williams (Noted English Scale Glider Guru/personality) visits Bordertown and VARMS in
Melbourne, the following is a record of both.
Bordertown - 3-6 November 2000 Scale Regatta ..... "The Big One"
You will no doubt have seen advertising for this event during the past months. Bordertown
for the last four to five years has been the venue for those Scale Glider Guiders who like to
congregate, compete in a no stress competition, chat, swap stories, socialize and generally have a
fabulous time.
The event is the brain child of the Scale Soaring Association of Australia, who back in the
late eighties/early nineties decided to co-ordinate Scale Glider pilots who were fragmented all over
Australia. This organisation with its committee of management based in Adelaide has 82 members
in five different countries, truly an international body.
Bordertown 2000 had its beginnings in November 1999 when the association decided to
make 2000 a memorable occasion and to give it a truly international flavour, Chris Williams well
known Scale Glider Guider and Scale columnist with Quiet Flight International was approached by
Don Moreland, Secretary of S.S.A.A. to see if he would be interested in coming to Bordertown to
see how we do things down under. I will not bore you with the details, however, after a lot of work,
phone calls, emails to and from the United Kingdom, approaches were made to the M.A.A.A. which
resulted in successful sponsorships for Chris's tour. The tour would have Chris speaking in Western
Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, more about the Victorian tour later.
For my part this is the third trip to Bordertown, my two previous trips have been enjoyable,
a low key 2 to 3 day affair which had accumulated in around 60 scale models being present. So it
was with great excitement that Frank Smith and myself headed west on Friday morning the 3rd of
November, arriving at Bordertown around 4.30 in the afternoon, some 500kms after leaving home.
This year we transported our models in a full size glider trailer, but also cut down the likelihood of
travel damage on the car roof top box and the constant chafing of models in my sedan. We had nine
models packed in the trailer for our trip and came back with ten. (More about the tenth model later).
On our arrival many modellers who had arrived earlier had taken advantage of the good soaring
conditions and flying continued until sunset.
Saturday and Sunday were the main days of the Regatta, with Static judging and proving
flights conducted on Saturday and the Soaring part of the competition conducted on the Sunday.
The Soaring part of the competition required entrants to accumulate 30 minutes of flight time, this
may not seem too hard, however as most of you will know extended flights are dependent of a
number of factors, the most important being the presence of thermals. Just to give you an example,
I was privileged to time keep for Andrew Crowe, who had entered his 1/4 scale scratch built K13
model, His flight times were 7 minutes, 5 minutes, 17 minutes and to record the minimum of 30
minutes he had to undertake a fourth flight to register 20 seconds to complete the Soaring task.
Saturday night was spent at the Bordertown Town Hall, a very nice 3 course meal was
provided and Chris Williams gave a very informative talk on Scale gliding, smattered with some
jokes and his wiry wit. At the conclusion of his talk Chris was asked to draw the raffle, the prize
being a brand new ASW 24 1/4 scale model fully fitted out with retract unit and guided by a brand
new JR 3810 radio, donated by Model Flight of Adelaide. Chris Williams flew the model on
Saturday just to show the raffle entrants, that they would, in fact, be getting a flyer. Well when the
winning ticket was drawn, none other than the person sitting next to me won the fabulous prize.
You should have seen the smile on Frank Smith's face when his name was called, congratulations
Frank, a deserving winner. There was also another prize on offer when you bought your raffle
ticket, the prize was a magnificent arm chair designed and made by a member of the S.S.A.A. This
prize was won by Reg Millson of Sydney.
The good thing about Bordertown is that general scale flying does not stop because of the
competition aspect, both going on in conjunction all day. On Sunday evening at the field, prizes
were being presented to their respective winners. The gliders were broken into 2 classes, Class 1 -
all gliders where the full size prototype was flown before 1957 (this period mainly covers wooden
type gliders), and Class 2 covers all full size prototypes post 1957, this covers types right up to the