George Shering

As an electrical engineer I was always interested in electric flight, starting with an MFA Hummingbird in 1980.

Attended the first Electric World Championship in Lommel, 1986, came second in the 30 minute glider event, and was "hooked". Rudi Freudenthaler became my "boyhood hero" and I have flown most of his Surprise line of planes. I have attended all world championships since Lommel, and have been in the UK team since Australia 1994. I hope to attend all future championships, but hope some of our bright young pilots will soon relegate me to helper status.

Notable contributions were pioneering the use of 20/18 NiMH cells to replace 26/27 NiCds in San Diego, 2000, then building the first limiter and demonstrating it to CIAM in Lausanne, March 2007. An important part of the demonstration was a PC program to display, analyse and demonstrate the flight. This program now works with the SM Unilog limiter and is also available on Linux. You can have it free with my compliments, see the Limiters item under F5B equipment.

Flown mostly Surprises interspersed with those of my friends Tal Nizri (Clash) and Urs Leodolter (an Austrian one and his own Twister), and now Sergey Sobakin's Avionik. Hacker motors provided the flexibility to move to NiMH in 2000 and I have used them since. Kontronik controllers until 2008 when I moved to Castle Creations. FlightPower batteries, thanks for the sponsorship in Ukraine 2008.