Hello from Sunny (at least for now) Finland,
An eventful day, at last.

Despite an early briefing, flying of the Q was slow to start for the usual admin/weather reasons. At one stage, the warm-up pilot had flown twice, with only one scoring competitor between his two sorties. However, after an early lunch due scheduled commercial traffic things picked up and we pressed on to complete the Q Programme at about 7.45.

Results are in and can be seen here ...

A word of explanation is probably due about Julian's flight. It would appear that he ate less than enough during the 6 hours between early lunch and his flight in the early evening, even though we were all careful to keep well hydrated. Jules had a problem staying awake on Figure 1, perhaps due low blood sugar, and then couldn't fly the spin as planned. He managed to carry on and finish the sequence, but the positioning was not what he planned and some figures were consequently low-scoring for being too close.

Of course, this is just the Q and we have a good weather forecast until Monday evening by which time we should hopefully have done the first unknown and the Q will be discarded - touch wood please, all of you.

You will also see, from the general percentages, that the judging panel is being rather parsimonious and that the Jury will probably excuse quite a number from the 60% rule. Steve managed a steady flight to keep above 60% and in the top third. Finishing in the bronze was pleasing for me, especially in a rental that is still somewhat different from our own, not to mention the two-seat, nose heavy, rudder-less faggot-plane aspect. Anyone want to buy a share???

You will see that the top two pilots seem to have quite a buffer on this sequence. We'll see if this continues to be with the Free Programmes, where sequence design can play a significant part.

As JP will be completely sleepless if kept in ignorance, here is a drawing of my Free (which he would have seen at Compton if he'd got there last month (hint, hint) ...

You will notice that there are no Russian flights recorded on the results page. Their bad news, despite having 3 pilots here and the Viktor/Elena management team, is that their SP55 has not arrived from the Motherland, ostensibly due to something about "permissions", whatever they are. Their loss, together with that of my aircraft host Tapio Pitkanen (blocked ears - medical) means that we have just 30 competitors in what could probably quite reasonably be renamed the ANEAC.

Pete Rounce will be sending pictures today, so I expect NB will pop them in with the narrative when it appears on the web blog pages (yup, above-right).
Toodle pip

And later ....
Good Day again,
Flying of Frees has started, but slowly because of paperwork delays. Now lunch, after pilot 6. Julian is first to go after post prandial warm-up pilot. Have not been watching them so no clue about any gossip.

Had the 1st Unknown briefing this morning, so here attached is a little brain teaser for you (see Unknown #1 Figs above). Rearrange into a sensible sequence. More later (see Unknown #1 Final above).

And later still!
Hi Again,
Writing is always a bit harder when you haven't done quite so well, and today is one such occasion.

All the Frees were flown, the results are now published in the usual place. Julian had a good flight, a bit better in the judges eyes than mine as it happens. Probably rightly so, as I had an under-rotation on Figure 8 that I didn't really see and that cost me several places in a very tightly packed part of the field.

As its close, there is still a lot to play for tomorrow, so concentration is again high on the list.

Steve is very annoyed with himself, having got a Hard Zero for a 3/4 roll that turned out to only be a half on the day. His figure 5 was also a bit wonky and so got low scores. Nervousness seems to have won the day there after a really good stab at the Q the day before. We will all be trying even harder tomorrow.

Biggest tragedy of the day, however, went to Sami Kontio the Finnish Ultimate 300 pilot who had such a good day yesterday. He missed out his Figure 10 completely, and it was a turn-around figure. So he had three HZ at the end of an otherwise very tidy effort. This is such a fickle sport.

Biggest mystery of the day remains the scores the French pilots have been picking up, both for a lot of figures flown so close as to be almost over the judges heads, and also for the framing marks. Graham Hill made the point in both briefings that the judges are only 170m from the edge of the box, instead of the more preferable 200-250m. The implication was that we should fly farther away.

The French Team ignored this advice and got good scores even though their figures included a plethora of 45 lines, some with opposite rolls on, and even a complete loop with a roll in the top flown really close up. This probably sounds a bit like sour grapes, but it seems we definitely need one sort of Free Programme, with cross-box corrections galore, to take account of domestic contests with winds etc, and a completely different design for the International events with the chance to make it cross-box neutral and fly really close all the time.

Guess where I'll be putting the Unknown tomorrow!!
Alan