Saturday 08:30: OK the weather isn't great but it's broken at 1,500 to 2,000 and we can see the sun. There are five pilots waiting to fly and a DR400 is on its way from Bournemouth to join us with a couple more.

The plan: We have two aircraft with safety pilots, Simon in the T67 and Howard Fawkes in a Robin 2160. Each pilot will do a sortie away from the circuit and, on return, if they can find a gap somewhere around the box will fly the Beginners sequence and we will judge it to provide debrief and feedback from the ground. The weather continued to clear and only one pilot didn't get a sequence assessed from the ground. Mid-morning Annabelle Burroughes arrived in her beautiful Jüngman and was also able to fly an initial sequence in the box.

A pause to hold a further briefing for a more formal assessment flight to be flown in the afternoon. By now the weather is absolutely fine if rather cold so that sunburn is the main problem (forecast, er . . . what forecast!). Each pilot now flies a second flight in the box, which the team judges. Being the sort of people we are we also stuck the scores into the computer this time to see who did best. There was only one Hard Zero - Eric Whitehead pulled up right wing low for the stall turn and ruddered left - the aircraft stopped nicely vertical slid back a fell over; I guess about 6.0 for the tail slide. Oh, and Martina Van Der Leij had to land early due to a loose panel (which was a shame as, despite not yet having a PPL, she flew some very good figures in the morning with a particularly smooth slow roll).

In the end Mike Ellis scored highest but only by 1% from Stephen Hulks followed a further 3% behind by Richard Chapman. What mattered most though was that all the pilots learned a lot and enjoyed themselves, we had plenty of laughs on the ground watching and the weather completely failed to spoil things.

Phil O'Donoghue flew Sam Spurdens (from Loop) down in the middle of the day. We put Sam out to scribe for Phil while he judged - he got a little cold not really being dressed for the cold breeze but it didn't stop him taking plenty of photos.

The heroes of the day were Simon Janvrin and Howard Fawkes who were more or less padlocked into their aircraft except for a short break for lunch - the event would have been impossible without them. My thanks go to Loop for their support and to my Judging Team of Julie Wood, John Byrne and Phil O'Donoghue with their assistants. Ben Ellis, as always, ensured things ran smoothly and I look forward to going down to Bodmin in the future when there is a bad weather forecast - I know we'll have a great day.