The Shobdon Trophy - 2008

CD's Report
Given that my first attempt as CD last year was dominated by a Moses level of zeal to part the waves at Dunkeswell, I was concerned that the approaching front from the southwest would spell ruin for the Saturday at Shobdon. Since we had no beginners to run at 11am, we brought the intermediate briefing forward to 1pm so we could run two programmes by 6pm on the Friday, and happily everyone arrived on time to allow us to commence the Intermediate known at 13.40.

With the cloud-base at just under 3000ft AGL, and the wind straight down the runway at 8-10kts, we managed to fly the known within two hours and tacked both our unlimited pilots on the back of this for two exciting unlimited Q’s (Nick in G-WILD and JP in his highly configured Lego bricks). Our only technical difficulty was a sense of humour failure from G-EEK when Adrian got a call from Martina to say she was adrift with no engine just off Gibraltar (in a boat – not an aeroplane!) ... we moved Adrian back two places in the flying order so he could talk her through “re-start or swim” options.

During the short break we conducted a revised weather brief with the updated Saturday Birmingham & Bristol TAF’s promising rain, a gusting southerly (against a 27 runway) and a cloud-base of 800-1000ft AMSL until 1800.The consensus opinion, plus my concerns on possible departure safety issues given the airfield elevation and local hills, was that we should push to complete the competition on the Friday evening and the airfield management agreed to keep open as long as we needed to complete the unknown programme and then re-fuel everyone for departure.

At 16.20 Alan Wood was warmed up and ready in G-XTRA as soon as the judging team had refuelled with tea and snacks and in true BAeA style. The whole group managed the time very efficiently with no hold-ups or delays, and we finished Unknown-1 at 18.02 which is about as well timed as it gets.

Summary: a good competition, no problems, no noise complaints, with everyone up/down and away safely. I’d like to thanks everyone who flew, judged or helped to make this a successful, if short, event. I’m sure we’ll be invited back next year, despite a mystery Pitts 3-ship formation passing overhead the village on departure generating a post event noise complaint ....

Simon Cattlin
Contest Director