ModelAir at SAM 35’s Retro Fest
14th-15th June 2025
As we are sadly unable to
hold our usual ModelAir meetings at Old Warden this year, SAM 35 have kindly
offered an invitation for ModelAir to attend their Retro Fest at Buckminster,
our National Centre over the weekend of 14th-15th June.
Do please take up this kind offer which will help keep our ModelAir community
together until such time as we can have our own event again.
There are a few points to
note….
- There will also
be a big Swapmeet at Buckminster on the Sunday, which all our traders and car
booters are very welcome to take part in. If you would like to sell there,
please contact Manny at Buckminster to arrange this (manny@bmfa.org) or call 0116 244 1091
- We will be
holding our annual Ebenezer competition on the Saturday
which is open to everyone. It will follow the usual format of static
judging and flying to award the Ebenezer trophy. We will then finish with a
mass launch, so please dust off your Ebenezers and join us at Buckminster.
- As this is
primarily a vintage event, the only R/C flying will be 3 channel vintage or
Radio Assist, as with all the other free flight, control line flying etc, there
is unfortunately not the space to safely have any other form of R/C at this
event for this year. There are, however, many other great events at Buckminster
this year for Radio disciplines, so please take a look at the website for details of those.
We really hope to see you at
Retro Fest and I thank SAM 35 for the invitation to attend their event until we
can, once again, hopefully have our own ModelAir events in the future.
For more details of Retro
Fest, please click HERE
Best Regards,
James.
A statement from the ModelAir team
Since the July model flying event, we have been working very hard trying to secure the future of Model flying events at Old Warden, that we ran on behalf of Shuttleworth, but unfortunately to no avail.
Our last course of action was to appeal to the Shuttleworth trustees who have replied as per the letter below, which basically says that Shuttleworth will no longer host model flying events on the airfield.
You will see in the letter that the trustees mention the use of the parkland for modelling events. We have thoroughly investigated all the locations proposed to us on the parkland, and it is our opinion that these areas are unsuitable for the majority of our model aircraft disciplines for both practical and legal reasons. Therefore, we do not feel that relocating the model aircraft disciplines into the parkland is a viable option for us.
We will, however, continue to monitor the situation at Shuttleworth with regards to any future aeromodelling events.
Whilst we explore alternative options for 2026 for a full event, this year, we would recommend all our disciplines, apart from RC, attend the SAM 35 events at the National Centre (details can be found at sam35.org.uk/sam35-event-calendar). These events at Buckminster also include swapmeets for all attendees, traders and car booters to get involved in. We are in discussions with SAM 35 to hopefully bring some of the Old Warden atmosphere to their events, especially at their June event this year. More details to follow.
The National Centre also has lots of other events throughout the year to suit all modelling
disciplines, so please take a look at the calendar https://nationalcentre.bmfa.org
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported aeromodelling events at Old Warden over the many decades and if July 2024 was the last model flying event at Old Warden, we are glad it was such a great weekend, enjoyed by so many of you.
Emma Chase on behalf of the ModelAir team.
REACH US
Get Directions
Old Warden Airfield, Old Warden, Bedfordshire, SG18 9EP
Event info
Name: Emma Chase
✉ modelair.oldwarden@gmail.com
Flight Director
Name: James Gordon
✉ jamesrrg@hotmail.com