remind everyone just how small is our playground and so easy to collect the associated box-out penalties. The continuing re-arrangements to Sywell's well-marked grass

This year some pretty serious winds from the NW also helped to ensure that staying in front of the judges was an essential skill if winning was a pilots' true ambition.... At first briefing we were easily able to set the scene, but with the officials and box horizontals well sorted the verticals then failed us and for most of Thursday and Friday the sub-2,500ft cloud-base kept the tea and chat going and the flying not. During the second day an improving trend lured me into starting the advanced "Q", but both the cloud-base and the strict Sywell time constraints conspired to beat me and after only a few flights it became clear that with half the flying days behind us we'd be better concentrating on the Free's and unknowns, so a line was drawn and those who had flown given the benefit of a look at the box without the marks being banked. We tried ....

The plan was always as is usual at this event to give the unlimited pilots top-dollar billing, but as we had suspected when the Saturday situation arrived it was not an immediate improvement. At an early stage Ron gave his S2B a swift look and then provided the judge's with their helping of low-lines, but it seemed that all of middle-England was fixed under the same depressing less-than-800m grey-stuff. Eventually a sluggish improvement was detected, and when James Allison braved a first flight that seemed to break the ice .... at last we were up and into it. It is, I feel, very interesting to contrast the two nationals from many aspects. The standard and intermediate affair - once it gets into it's stride - is always a frantic succession of flights at an easy 10/hr with pilots keen to get straight into the box and strut their stuff. The switch to advanced seems essentially a fairly technical step with more of the same figure-work from a bigger range, but the need to pace the arena and get properly psyched-up before committing to a high-impact entry takes far more time and - with the longer sequences - almost halves the run-rate. By lunchtime though we had it beat, and the unlimited pilots were eventually able to get into their own game. At this early stage Mark Jefferies had almost a hundred points in hand over Tom Cassells, whilst Ron Allan held a rather more tenuous sub-20 point lead over Julian Murfitt at advanced with several others very close behind indeed.

However .... when Gerald launched to test the post-lunch arena the dreaded cloud-base was just too low for unlimited again, so the thirteen advanced pilots - in a renewed flying order driven by the current rankings in reverse - continued with their first unknown. This was a lengthy 14 figure affair dominated by rolling circle variants, and quite a few rolled their furry dice the wrong way ... Whatever, I did think that we'd get the whole of advanced Free done before the 18:00 curfew, but as the final bell got closer it would clearly be a close run thing. In the event the curved ball came from the tower and concerned some strange out-of-hours NOTAM requirement, so the final two pilots Ron and Julian had to survive a suspenseful evening and wait to finalise the ranking at the 2/3 point the next morning.

In fact the Beeb weather guru's got it about right for the final day, which started with a fine outlook but as time went by inevitably collected those growing size puffs of cumulus that eventually joined up into the real thing ... of course, bang on the 2,500ft margin. So once again the unlimited box-lines came and went, this time from Richard and including some (bored??) 50m examples that had ATC Ed expressing some doubt as to their intention ... and on to his first unknown, which to be fair was just a bit cramped by the less than ideal available vertical free space. "Not enough!" was the verdict from Gerald, so the advanced brigade once again got going - this time into their second unknown. And then right at the end, when all hope was seemingly on the very edge, the Cu drifted up towards the magic 1,000m mark and the unlimited unknown was flown to conclusion. Phew.

Throughout the day from all around the country away from our competition were coming increasingly dire reports of unpleasant weather, and with this in mind we called it a day and promised to keep the unlimited 4-minute Free-Style and advanced Masters on ice for the Tiger Trophy meet in three weeks time. Our champions for 2007 are thus Mark Jefferies at unlimited, who lost the unknown to Tom but by a small enough margin to prevent the Yorkshireman getting by, and a delighted Julian Murfitt at advanced - wee Ron won the first unknown by just one and a half points but slipped away into 3rd in the second one to let Smurf by into a quarter percent lead ... such are the pressures in a multi-day multi-sequence event. Tremendously well done to the winners, commiserations to the rest, and as usual a huge vote of thanks for the use of Sywell's green and pleasant airfield. It does seem to have been quite a long season - and still there are three more power events to go, now including the Four Minute Free David Perrin Trophy and the Masters quasi-Aresti fall-about job at Sherburn-in-Elmet, plus our new Glider vs. Power Team affair at Lasham. Be there!

Nick Buckenham
Contest Director