The BAeA's Standard and Intermediate Nationals first had it's own 'proper' event at Wickenby in 1995, remaining there for three years before beginning it's long term affair with Peterborough Conington. Thus this was the lucky thirteenth occasion that the old USAAF 457th Bombardment Group base at Glatton has provided the back-drop to this invariably hard-fought championship. Whilst in past years the box has generally squatted over the railway line to the south-east, for this year a new location right over Pet-Con's main 10/28 runway was used - and very effective it was too, those at the club-house enjoying a fine view of the good .... and not-so-good features of the sequences being flown, with compliments and hoots of derision in unequal quantities.
 
With a final tally of 19 Standard and 17 Intermediate pilots and a possible four sequences each to fly this was bound to be a hard event to complete. At Intermediate we even had a couple of 'forriners to swell the ranks, Jan Nijhof making the trip from Lelystad in the Netherlands and Laurent v Niewenhove back again from Belgium after his Fenland debut a few weeks back. Thursday's fine weather made for only the briefest delay to the start, and by close of play we had both Known's in the bag and the Standard first unknown sorted too. It always takes a while to get up to the right pace in this event, a solid nine flights per hour being required throughout if we are to stand a chance of getting it all done. The Thursday night smilers then were Jez Burgoin in the lower class, narrowly heading Paul Brice and Steve Kirton, whilst Phil Burgess set the ball rolling at Intermediate ahead of David Thompson and Charlie Kimbell. All very close, all very promising ... although the Friday weather forecast was not so hot.
 
In the event however, with a 90° change in box direction for good measure, we got past the early scud quite quickly ... to such good effect that by close of play we had a further four sequences completed. The leader boards of course were not quite the same - by dint of some extremely hard work Ed Cyster, unusually toting the Cassidy S2-A as himself had taken the S1 to Poland for the WAAC, had stolen the Standard class lead by a mere 7 points from Steuart Walton in his S2-C with Jez now down in third place, whilst after the Intermediate Free programme Charlie Kimbell had grabbed the lead from David Thompson, with Andrew Barlow now in the third slot just ahead of Phil. At this stage our annual visit to Sawtry's noisy but rewarding Spiceland curry buffet intervened, and the usual psycho-babble helped to put all the flying into some sort of perspective. Well, slightly.
 
We had high hopes for the Saturday, sadly not mirrored by the weather men in Bracknell .... the cold front that was supposed to spoil Friday's flying left us grappling with some pretty unusable two-level cloud formations, with an added expectation for heavy showers as the day progressed. It all took a while for the lower clag to clear enough for us to get going again, with the judges once more back in their southerly home, and as the day progressed I really thought that we'd get it all done. This however was too optimistic by some distance ... the plan had always been to complete by 1700 so that everyone could get away in good time, and by lunch-time it was clear that to make this work the final unknown sequence would have to be a top-10 shoot out for both levels - and then ..... it showered on the judges (but not us), Paul Brice enjoyed a 'hot-box' with a passing Spitfire, it showered on us (but not the judges), and so on. The standard ten made it through OK, but with time slipping inexorably away an extremely nasty looking black CB to the north of the clubhouse spat it's stuff into the box and halted the ninth Intermediate flight, and with the prospect looking worse by the minute I just had to pull the plug - very unwelcome I know, but with the alternative options gone there was really no other choice. That meant there were eight fun-filled but ultimately wasted Intermediate flights, including some moments that Phil Burgess at least would definitely like to forget .... the Intermediate results thus included just the one unknown rather than two.
 
The Mazda UK Standard level Champion for 2010 therefore is a delighted Ed Cyster, with the silver and bronze slots going to Steuart Walton and Paul Brice respectively. At Intermediate the man with the big grin is Charlie Kimbell, Mazda UK Intermediate level Champion, the runner-up gongs going to David Thompson and Phil Burgess respectively. So once again we enjoyed a truly memorable few days in the company of good friends at a lovely English country airfield, in passable weather and with some great aerobatic flying, and had some pretty good food too. Thanks of course to the long list of judges, scribes, assistants, runners, the scorer, bar-staff, fuellers, foodies, and extended family members who let us do just what we wanted for three whole days. Are we lucky, or what?