As is sometimes the case the 2017 senior nationals at Sywell was a triumph in two parts – the first through the stoic sufferance of all present for the fruitless first two days while we all watched a low cloud-base relentlessly march by, followed by two pretty good competition days during which we worked hard to chase as much into the time as we possibly could. In fact we did get a few flights into the bag during the first two days before sub-800m cumulus called progress to a swift halt, but once we eventually got going on the Saturday it was pretty good marching all the way.

This year we (thought) we had a pretty good unlimited entry, but unfortunately the French en-route weather kept Melanie Astles down in the south of France and aspiring UNL pilot Phil Burgess was waylaid by a spot of shoulder trouble. The Advanced fourteen had all managed to reach Sywell by the start of the real business on Saturday morning however, including Stijn De Jaeghere with an EA330SC from Belgium and returnee Nick Wakefield with a gorgeous looking S2A, so in all we sported 16 pilots almost from the start.

The results below show that Tim Barnby struggled for his 54 percent, but boy did he work hard for it! They say that the XA-41 isn’t an easy animal to tame, and sure enough Master TB provided some very interesting manoeuvres along the way to demonstrate just that. For Gerry this was a serious trial ahead of the Worlds that are later this year in South Africa, and his near-80% is surely a GOOD SIGN. With just the two of them and Tim needing to depart early to fly a big shiny plane down to Johannesburg for Mr Branson we put the David Perrin final freestyle trophy away for another day.

At Advanced there had been a good deal of hard training ahead of the event by most, and apart from a smattering of the usual gotcha’s the standard was pretty high. Chris Brook had the trophy almost within his grasp until the Free Unknown, an immaculate 9-point roll unfortunately putting paid to that while Paul Tomlinson, who had suffered dire engine maladies on the Saturday and had to squeeze all three flights into the final day, kept his nerve and stole the goodies in fine style.

Steve Todd ran a five-set judging team throughout, itself a worthy achievement. Sywell were as usual just excellent, JB was extra busy-busy for much of the time with paperwork for the Free Unknowns and other delights, and we all saw some very good flying.

More please!