How good it was to be asked
back to Sleap. The welcome, hospitality, and excellent facilities make
this one of the great venues. With the judges, briefing room, score room,
flight-line, control tower, and bar all within 50 yards of each other
organisation is far easier too, especially with Jen Buckenham tirelessly
driving the computer and Steve Green's experience and good judgement.
For the pilots this weekend
was to produce challenges, not just from a confusing runway layout but
also from a very teasing cloud-base that gave everyone something to think
about - mostly these challenges were overcome, but that is not to say that
painful lessons were not learned, with that old chestnut of flying the
sequence the wrong way rearing its head again. Perhaps we should set up
a 'one-way-only' club along the lines of the cricketing primary club
(where membership is conditional on scoring a golden duck) - if so the
membership would run from unlimited pilots to beginners.
There were six pilots at
Beginners, the scores were very tight indeed and they belie the lower than
ideal sub-3000' cloud-base. Paul Grant joined the one-way-only club on his
debut - but flew the figures well in the Cessna. However it was David
Jenkins in the Lazer that took the prize - narrowly ahead of the biplanes.
So with six good performances the ranks of standard are set to swell and
become even more competitive. With a strong on-judge wind the positioning
of all the beginners was excellent.
We woke up on Saturday to
an even lower cloud-base of c.2000ft and spent a frustrating morning spent
looking at the Welsh hills that stood out clearly in the distance, but
under a cumulus lid.
Mrs Golding-Barrett arrived, with her daughter Brhyer,
and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting to them. When Mark Jefferies landed
(after strutting his stuff in the Yak-11 en-route to Ireland) and offered
to whisk Bryher off to Ireland in his spare seat, Mrs G-B just raised her
eyebrows as if to say, 'pilots are still the same'. Anyhow Mrs G-B left
after my assurances that the chances of a competition were less than 50% -
no doubt the reason why we did fly - but I hope she will forgive me (she
drove over 2 hours each way) and come back to give the prizes next year.
However
after a re-briefing at 13:30 the pilots accepted the decision to replace
the spin in the known with a 90° turn, and that a contest result would be
declared from the result of the single sequence. Hence flying began at
14:00 with the ability to take free breaks re-emphasised. The pilots all
exercised good discretion in the use of the free breaks and so the contest
was completed by 17:15, albeit with the one-way-club adding another to its
numbers. Pilots two-up flew at Hors de Concourse and most notable amongst
them was Harry Mason who flew the S2B beautifully from the front seat and
would have come second. He has an interesting way of improving his seating
position, and said that aero clubs are always a little surprised when he
asks for their yellow pages, when they ask which district his answer of 'a
large one' only confuses them more.
The field was dominated by
Pitts of differing variants; S1C, S1D, S1S, S2A, S2B, S2C!! Adam Lewis
ultimately triumphed in my old friend STUA by a good margin, with Mark
Davies and Dave Cowden coming 2nd and 3rd - congratulations to them all,
with twenty-two pilots standard still has to be one of the hardest classes
to triumph in.
Special mention must be
made of the radio call of the day. A certain Robin pilot had disappeared
off to the airborne hold and failed to return for a while when we heard
the following call, 'Foxtrot Charlie [sorry James Hughes!] ...erm...I
am not where I think I am...' - James welcome to the club, and
the never-never-land of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull - you are going to
fit in just fine, there is always space for the philosopher in the world
of aerobatics...
Kester Scrope
Contest Director