Jet Provost Mass Build Fly-In at the Orme 2014

If you want to look at the remainder of the photographs taken on the day click the button PSS Photos

For the second time this year, Keith and I attended the PSS Fly in at the Orme over the weekend of 31st May and 1st June.

This meeting had attracted a lot of publicity in that there had been planned since January 2014 a mass Build Project using the 1950’s and 1960’s aerobatic Jet Provost as the chosen model designed by Andy Blackburn from a 2006 Traplet Publications plan.

I decided very late in the day, in April to have a go at buiding and flying the model at the Orme last weekend. It was such a rush, with much midnight oil being burnt as the deadine approached.

Sadly the forecast for the weekend was little if any wind. The official fly in day for the Jet Provost was the Sunday. The wind had been too light on the Saturday until late afternoon, and the same pertained on the Sunday. It was dead still and only fit for electric powered gliders and very light floater type thermal soarers.

The Jet Provosts were grouped together in a taped off area. There were 18 of them, of which 15 flew. Many different colour ways used at various points in time including the RAF when the aircraft was used as the chosen aerobatic display plane in the same way as the Red Arrows use Hawks now. 

It was not possible to fly at all until about 2.30pm when finally the wind got up to about 20mph and swung round to the South West. Suddenly, many maiden flights took place of the JP’s including my own. Astonishingly it flew straight out of the box, as the saying goes. We managed to get in about an hour’s flying before Phil Cooke called us to the cars for the prize giving.

Traplet had kindly donated some prizes including goodie bags, and £25 plan credits. The prizes I can remember were:-

Most Innovative JP Design went to Mark Kettle who had made a Provost out of black EPP Foam. Most Promising Newcomer went to new member Steve Mclaren, and Best Static JP to Bob Jennings from Macclesfield. We had a chat and I did try to persuade him to join LMMGA.

I left to join my family at 4.30, but many stayed to fly on ’till dark as the conditions had improved from stillness to booming lift.

Also at the event were the usual collection of wonderful scale PSS models such as the Simon Cocker designed B52 Bomber, a remarkable own designed Mig29 Jet which won the best design of the day in the non JP category (I think it was built by Andy Meade?) – sorry should have made proper notes.

At the event was RCM & E Magazine and a free lance reporter, so watch out for more publicity elsewhere.

The event as usual was very interesting. The concurrent flying of so many Jet Provosts was nowhere near as confusing as I thought it would be, but you daren’t take your eyes off your own model.

There are even people building the model as far afield as New Zealand and Japan. To read the blog with all the comments on this very interesting build go to the RCM&E Model Flying Build Thread – https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/index.php?/forum/97-pssa-mass-build-2014-jet-provost/. If you want to read my building experience with its ups and downs go to https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/index.php?/topic/28103-jet-provost-late-starter-build/

I have put more photographs of the day, which include some pictures of some amazing scale models in our photographs section here.