Not wishing to sound like a broken record, if you have not visited Compton Abbas, it's time you did. Compton is my favourite airfield sat up on the hill side with picturesque views and a well-appointed café and operations run by the Hughes family. This weekend the airfield was being run by Emma and Laura and as always they made us very welcome.  I flew down in the CAP232 to avoid the A303 on the first day of school holidays! and arrived around 10:00 with a cloud base of over 4000 feet

Jen took the opportunity of making a weekend of her trip down staying at a local B&B and by 11:00 we were all set up to register the hordes of contestants. Oh no that’s what normally happens but this year for some strange reason we only had 3 Adv and one club pilot. Briefing at 12:00, it was clear that 4 pilots were not going to take long to fly so I took the easy decision to propose we fly the Free Known and then after lunch fly the unknown. Mark Larroucau (his name has French origin in case you were wondering) was the only club pilot so after his first flight Rob Howarth, CJ took the opportunity to give him some personal coaching in preparation for his second flight. This paid dividends with an improved score after lunch ahead of the Adv guys flying the Unknown which was a tough one as often seems the case at Compton.

Unsurprisingly we finished the day mid-afternoon and still had time for Rob to give more personal coaching for Mark guiding him on the radio, so I am expecting to see Mark turning up at a Standard competition very soon.

Day 2 – Having completed both of the Adv programs yesterday we decided to have a later start briefing for Saturday morning, pitching up at 9:30 instead of the published 8:30. This proved a wise decision as morning fog covered the airfield. Luke Goddard drove in from Henstridge to make sure he didn’t miss the 08:30 brief . Sorry Luke it was a small punishment for entering the competition so late.

Needless to say we sat around for a couple more hours while the sun did its job to clear the fog. Now with 5 Intermediate competitors it did feel like a proper competition. But despite the small field of competitors I took the decision to scrub the Intermediate Free Known program at lunch time after a few failed attempts to find large enough gaps in the cloud. The upper cloud was fine but small lumps of scud were still popping up in a moist westerly airflow so after lunch Adv took to the sky for the Masters, quickly followed by the Apprentices battling it out for arguably the most important weekend program, the Air Squadron trophy, which comes complete with prize money. At Advanced, Chris Brook cleaned up in both the Aresti programs and the Masters but praise must be given to David Kean who did a sterling job of the Masters as his first taste of this type of program and with half the horse power of the Extra 330 and a fixed pitch prop. Dam good effort.

The intermediate field had a few more challenges with cloud sliding into the box and Jan Nijof and Dave Slater had to launch a couple of times to find a gap. However, it ended up as a close run match for the whole field, particularly for first and second place with Lucky Luke bagging the cash. What makes Compton particularly enjoyable is the reliable turn out of members of the public. With a vibrant café, we were blessed with many visitors including Andrew Wimble from the Royal Air Squadron who kindly came down to watch and present the prizes. He was joined by a few members including one of the founding members of the Royal Air Squadron, Ivor Falucorner who flew Swordfish, Walrus and Fulmar off aircraft carriers in WW2 and he loved the show. The PA system works well so we could take advantage of this and give running commentary on most of the flying which I am told helped many people learn a little more about our sport

No incidents and no scares, well from the competition pilots at any rate! and all in all a great fun couple of days. Thank you to all the judges and helpers and of course the pilots that managed to take part.