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Photo: Jeff Smith with Greenfields students. Aaron Murray, Kieren Soames, Dylan Gramman and Jordan North As a young(er) man Jeff Smith, the director of studies at Greenfields School, was a british model aircraft champion |
Jeff says:
The Greenfields Model Flying Association (G.M.F.A.) was founded in the Autumn of 1995 following the strong interest shown by students on the practical section of a course that I wrote called “Fluids and Flight”, where students were required to design and build their own model aircraft that would actually fly. As their enthusiasm grew, I decided that I would use my experience as a former British Champion with powered free flight contest aircraft to prepare them to compete in the British National Championships in May 2006. Eighteen students came with me and we took the first four junior places in the Hand-launched Glider Contest.
The following year, thirty-four students attended the championships! A Greenfields Team attended the Championships every year through to May 2000. The subsequent sale of the Coombe Hall site where the GMFA was based and the many changes that took place led to the GMFA going into storage.
Here we are, over a decade later, and the GMFA is making a come-back – in a big way. With work shop facilities and a considerable armoury of high- tech materials which I recently acquired (courtesy of my father and brother – fellow B.Ae. Team Members in days gone by) – not to mention a selection of national and international class contest aircraft to look at,
Greenfields Students will once again have the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to compete and succeed at National Championship level. Only, this time, they have access to materials that can help take them to the very top!
What are the benefits of such an activity? Considerable! For a start, it can be an exhilarating game to compete at national level and beyond! The standards demanded are obviously very high. It develops an individual’s knowledge and skills in the fields of design, materials, craftsmanship, engineering, physics, chemistry, aesthetics, tracking (you have to get your aircraft back) and, for that matter biology!
I was competing at National Level during my own school days and found it to be an invaluable educational experience – and it was a LOT of fun!! Amazingly, I still have some of the aircraft that I competed with over twenty five years ago. Even more amazing is the fact that they are still in working order! After routine checks on one of them today, I started up the engine on 65% nitromethane and it promptly ran at full tilt – about 25,000 revs per minute as if it had last run yesterday. Wonderful!
Obviously, things have moved forward technologically in the past two decades and Greenfields students will now not only have the opportunity to build aircraft with modern materials, but will also have the opportunity to participate in a project to build a State of the Art Contest Aircraft capable of screaming up to an altitude of over 1000 feet in under 10 seconds – with a nice vapour trail too!
I hope that the students have as much fun with all of this as I did when I was their age. It will give them moments of a lifetime!
“Having recently had a very successful inspection by the Independent Schools Inspectorate, we are looking at building on our strengths and adding more diversity to the curriculum. I am also starting a project to raise funds to build an observatory for the school’s telescopes. There are exciting times ahead for the education at Greenfields.”
