Its been a little while since I sent round a club update so apologies but thought I would update you all on some of the things that we, the club, have achieved over the last few months as well as some updates for you.

Summer Series
Our summer series events are well underway and we have had some fantastic racing on these fine summer evenings. Many thanks to the track designers who have raised the bar ,literally, with ladders, doubles and dive gates at every outing. We are regularly running finals style head to head racing and also we have rolled out our FPVRaceHub live lap times for pilots to see where they are on the leaderboard. I think its fair to say we are running some very high quality practice events and many thanks to those of you who are putting in the effort to make them happen.

British Country Show
Back in May we were invited to attend the show to put on some racing in front of the public. At short notice we managed to re-plan our GQ event and also have a day of racing at this new venue. The GQ was sold out with 30 pilots in attendance and we had top UK times posted on the global leaderboard. The Monday’s race was a bit more conventional with qualifying and head to head finals and was a great success too despite some very hot weather. We were perhaps a little unlucky with the weather in that the footfall for the event was less than expected but none the less, we had plenty of spectators enjoying the racing and asking lots of questions about what we do!
A massive thanks again to all those who helped make this a success, it was a pretty colossal effort with getting netting up and down and equipment and working with sponsors and I think we can be really proud of what we achieved that weekend!

Pilot Programme
The BCS was also the final event of the pilot programme. As a reminder we had 4 pilots join this 6 stage programme with online Velocidrone sessions and mentoring from our Race Coaches, together with in-person practise feedback. The aim was to improve their personal performance on the MultiGP GQ leaderboard and I can say without hesitation that all the pilots did fantastically and I hope they very much enjoyed the journey. Many thanks to the mentors and coaches involved, again this only works with their contributions. Looking to the future, this programme was quite novel and I hope that we will run another one at DROx. If you are interested to be apart of something in the future please do reach out and let me know.

Outreach
We had an article in the BMFA News Bulletin, describing how the club started.
We have had a number of people come and join us to see the racing and looking to join the community and it has been great to see some new faces, they are very welcome indeed. Lets continue to make them feel welcome and spread the word!
Next week we have an outreach event with the Air Cadets at RAF Benson which I’m sure will be good fun. Do let me know if you would like to take part.

Membership
We have had a number of people sign up as members. You can still sign up at anytime £15 for the year and you get your first practise session free! This is a great way to support the club by getting your name down as an official member and we hope to offer you additional membership benefits in the future.

Payments
Paypal is no more and we have moved over to use GoCardless. Thank you for adapting to this, ultimately its less fees which means we give you better value and racing experience for your flying fees.

Coming up:

10th July, 24th July, 7th August, 21st August – Summer Series

25th July – MultiGP Regional Qualifier. This is going to be great event! Last chance in the UK to get points on the regional leaderboard and we will be running double elimination format with a chase the ace final!

22nd August MultiGP GQ. Last chance to get your name on the global leaderboard!

Then… big drum roll….

We can announce that DROx will be hosting “MultiGP Northern European Regional Final” – 29th-30th August

This event will be massive! 2 days, the best of the pilots across the northern European region (UK, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia) all competing to be the MultiGP regional champion gaining them an invitation to the MultiGP Champs. The exact format and details for this competition will be announced in the coming week but get it in your diary and start getting excited.

As a club this is a massive opportunity and privilege. We will undoubtedly need some help from you with running this one so please let me know if you would like to be involved in anyway, any contribution would be appreciated and I’m sure you will enjoy helping make this event happen.

See you on the starting blocks!

James (@JRo)