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CD's Report
Contest opened
on Wednesday evening with the unknown and advanced figure selection, a lot
of psychology seemed to be evident with each of the unlimited pilots vying
for the most impossible figures, all fun and games until you have to fly the
sequence!.
The forecast weather for Thursday was as usual correct in parts, mostly the
bad parts and in spite of many hourly briefings during the day no flying
took place, one othe the really annoying days where it looks like it might
be better in a short while but never actually is.
Friday morning weather was a clear cloudless day and other than possible
high winds later had no excuses, flying begin at 10:05 only 5 mins later
than briefed thanks to great organisation by the Saltby team, tugs and even
some of the pilots. The wind did increase as forecast but we continued
flying even as the tugs were reporting winds of 35 knots almost 45 degrees
cross box at 3000 feet. The competitors coped really well with no major
excursions outside the box in any flight. The days of seeing people drifting
slowly down wind seem to be well behind us.
At the end of the day we had flown 3 sequences for advanced and unlimited,
and one each for the other classes so the comp was finally off to a good
start.
Saturday weather was even better; a number of people took photos of the sat
pictures at briefing in amazement of seeing a UK sat image with zero cloud
over land in the entire British Isles. The winds were also forecast lower
than the previous day with more than 30K visibility.
Flying went well and the chickens came home to roost for the unlimited
pilots as the unknown 2 program was due, probably one of the harder programs
seen for some time with more dotted lines than solid ones, lots of pilots
asking who put THAT in!.
One of the days highlights was when our youngest competitor (13 year old
Robert RIzk) got the highest sequence score of the contest with over 82% at
beginners, a lot of people hoping he will find another hobby before he moves
up the classes.
We flew all the planned sequences giving us a full competition in all
classes except advanced and unlimited where we had 5 out of 6 programs
flown, looking at the final unknown sequence it is probably just as well we
skipped it☺
Prize giving was held on the Saturday night followed by the Saltby all you
can eat buffet to end the competition.
As usual all the members and staff at Saltby put themselves out to do
everything they could to welcome us and I would like to thank them again for
there efforts, once again they made being the CD an easy task.
Chris Cain
Contest Director
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