The British Team for WAC 2000 includes 5 male pilots, one female pilot, a judge and his assistant.
 
The British Team

Bulletin 1 - August 8th
Hello everyone,

The Unlimited team assembled in Muret yesterday; the four CAPs flying uneventfully down from Aubigny in 1.5 hours thanks to a decent tailwind; the two Sukhois crossing the high point of the Pyrenees from Spain in a somewhat breathless manner. Judge Mike Riley and Assistant Karen drove down from Switzerland (long trip), arriving Sunday evening.

Yesterday afternoon was the first briefing and draw for order of flight for the Q Programme. Val has the lowest number at 9, then Alan at 26, Tom at 36. Nick, Patrick and Richard will probably have to wait until Wednesday for their Q flights. Weather this morning looks OK out of the hotel window, so its just down to the organisation as to how many flights get done. Altogether there seem to be 60 pilots, although one aircraft is yet to arrive and one Brazilian is still negotiating for a steed.

More when there is some action to report.
Alan Cassidy

Bulletin 2 - August 10th
All,

It is now morning of the third day of WAC and Programme Q has yet to be finished. It will be over by lunchtime. Day 1 saw us up to just 24 flights. Val was the only Brit to fly in this group. Alan and Tom flew yesterday morning, but the afternoon flying stopped at 7pm, just 2 short of Richard, with Nick and Patrick still to follow.

Tom had a good flight. Alan had a tailslide problem (!) but still has a qualifying score. Val appeared to lose box orientation in the roller and so had positioning problems therafter, but as of last night was on 60.01% so should go through unless TBLP somehow lowers her final score.

Judging has been quite harsh, with two pilots down in the 40s and a couple more in the 50s. It remains to be seen whether the Jury relent on the mandatory 60% cut or stay firm. As there are only 59 pilots, there is little in the way of time constraint.

Weather remains good, but hot (around 30-32) in mid-afternoon. The organisation is improving, and should be fully competent by the end of the Q session, I think.

Will send more news tonight or tomorrow morning when all "Q" scores are known and decisions made.

Alan
Full 'Q' Results

Bulletin 3 - August 12th
All,

The Q Programme was finished Thursday and the Frees started yesterday.

The 60% qualification rule was strictly applied after the Q, resulting in no less than 10 of the 59 contestants being eliminated. These unfortunately included our Richard Pickin, who flew a zero and a break after getting off-axis toward the end of the sequence in what is turning out to be quite a difficult box for orientation purposes.

Also eliminated were 3 Italians, 2 Ukrainians, 1 Swiss, and the sole pilots from Austria, Czech and Slovakia. Martin Stahalik, from Czech, was among the top pilots at EAC last year, proving that this new Qualification rule can get anyone who has a momentary loss of concentration. Another surprising error in the Q was made by current European Champion Sergei Rakhmanin who just left out the 4-point roll at the start of figure 1!!

So far in the Free, Tom and Nick seem to have the best results; the full list should be available at the end of today.

Alan
 

Bulletin 4 - August 15th
Hello again from Toulouse,

Some more detail from the WAC, unfortunately not much of it very good from the British point of view, but, you know, this is a really hard contest.

The Free programme finally ended last night (Sunday) at about 7.30pm. The full Free programme results are here, just suffice to say that the leader at the end of this sequence is Svetlana Kapanina, with America's Kirby Chambliss second and France's Eric Vazeille third.

Of the UK pilots, Tom had by far the best Free result, finishing in 22nd place and being the third-ranked pilot outside the big 3 countries. Nick was zero-free, slightly less accurate but flew in strong wind conditions and clocked up 5 outs. He ended 34th. We others all suffered from over-stretch on the day and unfortunately made significant errors.

Alan started Fig 1 with a 1-and-5/8th vertical roll instead of 1-and-a-half (unfamiliar box, not flying for 4 days etc etc) then went on to torque off on the slide at Fig 2. Although both these figures were initially scored by 7 of the 10 judges, a video replay led to all being revised down to zero. Hence an overall score around 50% and a not-very-pleasing 46th place out of 49.

Patrick had different problems but with much the same result, a snap in Fig 1 being zeroed for insufficient pitch and the spin in Fig 2 being forced by rushing to stay in the box. So here were two more zeroes and 47th place. Val managed to get 90 degrees off during Fig 2 and started Fig 3 before noticing, hence another 2 zeroes and 49th place.

So we are rapidly learning the difference between practice and competition, the effects of working in a strange and difficult box, in adverse wind
conditions and with the added pressure of the world watching. My own lesson is never to start again with as much as 1 and 1/2 vertical. Better to do five quarters or such, so you can keep a better eye on the orientation thing.

Now on to the First Unknown, which we all flew today except Tom who will be third up tomorrow. There were several nasty figures to contend with (sequence here), but the Americans came up with the best (fig-8). It goes like this...

Start very fast inverted and push vertical to make your eyes pop out (I think my parameters were 210knots and -8G). Make a positive vertical half flick as soon as you dare, then push again for an outside 3/4 P-loop. In the top of this loop, insert an 8-point roll. As you exit the loop inverted, pop in a quick 2-of-2 one way and a full roll opposite. Total 65K.

Second worst I think was the Italian job, which was a half loop up starting with 3-of-2 then 4-of-8 opposite, pull up with 1-and-1/2 positive flicks at the top followed by 4-of-4 in the same direction. The AWAC team will know how effective this is in catching out the unwary.

Twenty four pilots have completed the sequence to date, and I think only 7 of these have had clear rounds. Happily for me, I was one such and, despite some smaller errors, managed around 64% which is proving not un-respectable. At the end of the day, this put me around 6th of the 24 to fly the Unknown so far. No one has yet got 70% for this sequence and we are half way up the field.

Val of course had to fly first, so had no help watching others. Unfortunately she was caught in the American trap (which so far has also caught the two of their own pilots to have flown the sequence) and also went the wrong way in the final rolling turn.  Patrick also was defeated by the Yanks and also got 3-of-4 up when it should have been 4-of-4 and so also zeroed the stall turn.

Nick blew the US figure by virtue of insufficient entry speed, so has also dropped down a bit. Several pilots have made entertaining errors to keep us amused. Oleg Shpoliansky was flying really well until he forgot the 4-point roll on the Italian loop, so blew a 50K zero. The same was done by Bob Meyer, the US/Independent pilot. Top german Klaus Schrodt made a wonderfully long tail-slide with the inevitable consequence of falling the wrong way, quickly followed by a perfect 3/4 flick in the US figure when 1/2 would have been enough. American Debby Rihn found a new way to zero the stall turn by starting to roll the 3-of-4 down the wrong way, doing 2-of-4 right and 1/4 left but getting spotted. She subsequently had a technical after figure 6 and is yet to fly the second half of the programme. I could go on. Lets just say it was fun watching the carnage, especially on the US P-loop. 

We will all be doing our best to help Tom to a good flight tomorrow morning. A good flight with no zeroes will be needed to keep his position.

Now I must get some sleep.

Best wishes to all
Alan
 

Bulletin 5 - August 19th
All,

The first Unknown finished Tuesday evening. Alan had the best UK flight in this sequence, finishing 27th, but when the cut was made before the second Unknown only Tom and Nick survived to finish the contest.

Tom flew very well indeed to get 19th on this sequence, which caused problems for lots of pilots. Even big names like Kapanina and Chambliss zeroed, so great was the tension.

The last flights were late Friday afternoon. Final overall winner was Eric Vazeille of France, second Mikhail Mamistov (Russia) and third Eddy Dussau (France). Women's Champion is Catherine Manoury, completing a clean sweep for France.

Tom eventually finished 24th overall, a very good performance. Nick was 36th. Alan, Patrick and Val were 45, 47 and 49 respectively. So we can all say we are in the top 50 in the World!!

The four-minute Freestyle will be this afternoon, Saturday, but will not feature any UK pilots, just the top 15 or so from the main contest. By
tomorrow evening we should all be home after an endless 3 weeks away!!

See y'all soon.

Alan