The Nathaniel Alony, Cavendish Hotel
& Roy Legg Trophies at Elvington - 2010

Arrivals on a very wet Thursday afternoon were mostly confined to those arriving by road, although Nick Wakefield managed to be the first airborne arrival in his Pitts S1T, which looked even more diminutive than usual taxiing across the 50 acres of Elvington’s concrete dispersal area. A centre cross and an eastern tee marker were laid out in the hope that the weather would improve sufficiently in the morning to allow more competitors to arrive and for the contest to start.

Early on Friday morning we were greeted with blue skies and the lull in the rain allowed all of the Advanced level pilots to arrive at Elvington during the morning, although the moisture on the ground had led to too much low cloud to allow contest flights to start promptly. By 1130 the cloud had lifted sufficiently to let the Advanced pilots fly their Known (Qualification) programme. Nick Wakefield (Pitts S1T) established a small lead, closely followed by Marco Kalweit (Pitts S2C) and Alan Cassidy (Pitts S1T) – a top three for Pitts aircraft, ahead of Gary Ferriman (Extra 230) in fourth place flying the highest ranked monoplane. Given that the original single seat Pitts was designed in 1944 it is remarkable that the Pitts is still competitive at Advanced level in 2010 and the S1 variants still provide generations of pilots with affordable aerobatic flying.

The first Advanced Unknown was designed by the BAeA and was flown on Friday afternoon, being completed just ahead of the weather closing in again for the remainder of the day. A cloud base below 1050 meters meant pilots were allowed to take an un-penalised break during the sequence to gain more height if required, adding another parameter to their pre-flight sequence rehearsals. This time it was Marco who scored best in the Unknown, very closely followed by Alan (Alan scored 31 fewer points than Marco – not much of a gap considering that both scored more than 2500 points for the flight) and then Nick in third place. The aggregate scores from the Known and First Unknown placed Nick, Marco and Alan in the top three places respectively, closely chased by Gary. Ron Allan (Pitts S2B) had made-up some ground lost as a result of zeroing a figure in the Known programme, by flying the first unknown very well, posting a 69% score. Cas Smith (Pitts S2A) was hoping to secure a place in the British Advanced Team for 2010 by posting an aggregate score of at least 60% for the contest and he was well on his way to achieving his goal after scoring 64% in both of the first two programmes flown.

Saturday morning saw an influx of Intermediate competitors during the brief early morning sunshine. Unfortunately significant low cloud arrived overhead the airfield just as the briefing was finished and all of the participants needed to fortify their optimism and patience with copious quantities of caffeine, hot food and chocolate supplied by Joyce in her excellent catering unit, conveniently located alongside the briefing room. It was not until 1630 that the cloud lifted sufficiently to allow the first Intermediate Known sequence to be completed. The weather did not quite hold until the end of the afternoon, so three of the Intermediate competitors (Adrian, Emily and Alan) had to wait until the following morning to complete their flights.

Sunday had been planned as a weather contingency day and Steve Roper very kindly agreed that the contest could operate between 1000 and 1600 on the Sunday, in view of the fact that relatively little flying had been completed on Friday and Saturday. So as soon as the cloud base lifted to 2,800ft the three outstanding Intermediate flights were completed. The Intermediate contest was going to prove just as hard fought as that at Advanced. Phil Burgess (DR-107) held a very slender lead over Alan Wood (Extra 230) and David Thomson (Laser 230), all flying monoplanes, followed by Olly Elmer (Pitts S1SE) and Emily Todd (Pitts S2A) in fourth and fifth places, doing their best to push the Pitts variants into the medal places.

Next up were the Advanced competitors flying their Free Programmes. It would be interesting to see who had managed to keep their concentration and focus following a non-flying day on Saturday for the Advanced contingent. Alan Cassidy’s formidable contest experience helped him to deliver an outstanding Free Programme, scoring 78.8% for his flight, although Marco and Nick also held their nerve, securing second and third places respectively in the Free Programme. The aggregated results for the three Advanced sequences flown so far put Alan in first place with 7,320 points, followed by Marco and Nick – although with only 116 points separating the top three places and the final Unknown sequence still to be flown, the medal placings were too close to call.

Before the Advanced competition could be decided, the Intermediate competitors still had to fly their Unknown Programme. Some extremely good unknown flights were presented, with the top three pilots scoring more than 70% - David won the sequence by a narrow margin from Phil, with Adrian Willis (Extra 200) in third place. Alan Wood unfortunately collected a couple of zeros, ending his medal hopes. The final medal positions reflected some high quality flights, with Emily Todd winning bronze, David Thomson silver and Phil Burgess gold and capturing the Roy Legg Trophy.

On Friday morning the chances of flying the Advanced Free Unknown seemed remote, but somehow the weather had held sufficiently to give the competitors the chance to fly the sequence on Sunday afternoon. This sequence was built from figures proposed by each of the pilots, plus a couple thrown in by the Chief Judge. The competitors created two flyable sequences and a lively discussion ensued while each pilot decided which alternative to choose. Interestingly, Alan Cassidy declined to fly the sequence titled “Unknown AC” in favour of one called “Unknown XX”, leaving the other competitors somewhat perplexed.

Nick Wakefield flew the second Unknown exceptionally well, scoring 75% for the sequence, more than 5% ahead of all other competitors in the most difficult (highest K) sequence of the event. Ron came second in the programme, followed by Alan and Marco. So the medals had been decided. Marco Kalweit won the bronze medal, Alan Cassidy silver and Nick Wakefield gold and the Cavendish Hotel Trophy.

It had been a cold, wet weekend, but somehow the cloud base had held sufficiently to allow the contest to be completed in full. It is impossible to run a contest without support from many volunteers. Nick Buckenham led a very hard working Judging Team who spent hours outside in cold wind and rain throughout the weekend. Thank you to all of the judges, assistants, scribes, runners and helpers who made the judging line work so well. Jen Buckenham ran the registration and scoring offices extremely efficiently, delivered the box markers to Elvington and did a thousand other things to help set-up the contest in her capacity as Membership Secretary. Eric Marsh not only spent several days on the judging line, but also acted as CD on Sunday and is of course the sponsor of the Cavendish Hotel Trophy (www.cavendish-hotel.net!).

Steve Roper (Airfield Manager) worked extremely hard before and during the contest to ensure that we had the facilities needed to run the event, including refuelling all of the aircraft throughout the weekend. Joyce provided catering on site at the contest, which made a huge difference to the event, because all participants could stay close to the contest office and still get food and drinks easily. Christine Mellor gave the BAeA special access to the Museum for the weekend and that was very much appreciated.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this a safe, enjoyable contest. Elvington is a fantastic venue and we were very grateful to be invited there for this year’s contest and hope to return for many years to come.
Steve Green
Contest Director