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