Multiplex Cockpit SX in Hahnenmoos

My blog has been a little quiet, so let me bring you up to date.

In August I spent a fantastic stag weekend in Hahnenmoos in the Swiss alps with a group of F3F flyers from the UK and Switzerland, all at the kind invitation of our Swiss F3F flyer friend Stefan Bertschi.

Hahnenmoos is a fantastic site - the scenery is amazing, the slopes are varied, and the Alpine lift is quite different to anything we're used to in the UK. Quite eye opening really.

Hahnenmoos - DS ridge, front-side flying

The trip also provided the ideal opportunity to test my new Cockpit SX M-LINK. I'm a great fan of this radio in 35 MHz form, and the M-LINK version would provide all the cool glider programming without the worry of learning frequencies in a foreign language. As it turned out, going with 2.4 GHz turned out to be a good decision, as several slopes were in use simultaneously, which would have been a bit inconvenient with 35 MHz.

It was all change with the camera as well. I decided to leave the Pentax behind and take a compact camera instead. The problem with compact cameras has traditionally been their so-so image quality, but they've improved by leaps and bounds in the last 18 months. And I'm pretty happy with my little Olympus XZ-1 despite one or two handling issues (like a lens cap which stubbornly refuses to stay on). To get decent results you have to nail the exposure accurately and shoot at the lowest possible ISO, but get it right, and you're rewarded with splendid prints up on A4. More photos of Hahnenmoos on the RC-Soar.com gallery.

Hahnenmoss through the lens of the Olympus XZ-1

Back in London, I finished off a review of the Multiplex GPS telemetry sensor. This is the latest, biggest and thirstiest of their range of sensors for M-LINK receivers. The review to appear in RCMW. Suffice to say that it does what it says on the tin, and we had a lot of fun putting it through its paces at La Muela - the 'we' being myself and Kevin Newton, as it's a bit difficult for one person to control the model, take photos and read the telemetry!

Multiplex  GPS Sensor

The review will also contain a section on the Multimate, a cleverly designed hand-held programmer/reader for Multiplex's expanding range of 'smart' accessories.

Multimate programmer/viewer.

The reviews are due to appear in the December or January edition of RCMW.