This years event at Compton Abbas Airfield had a new addition with the introduction of Sports level pilots for the first time to my knowledge bringing with it the Gunpowder trophy. Friday arrivals were eased with registration from 11:00. Fortunately, the Royal flight scheduled to blast through our NOTAM didn’t cause any disruption and some longer range visitors from the Cassells camp and the first time competitor Alan Murphy flying in from Ireland, arrived on Thursday to make the most of the local hospitality.

A 12:00 briefing gave us our first flight at 13:00, squeezing 2700 feet out of the cloud base with a free break. Having Sport, Inters and Adv out to play gave us 25 pilots equally spread across each class plus one extra at Sport, which is a welcome turnout for Compton. All the Sport guys managed to fly before we gave the judging team a break and I must admit to being a little lax on supplying liquid and cake refreshments during this opening round! What is worth noting is the high standard of flying from all the Sport pilots and for that matter all levels. Top scores of 82, 84,87% from Sport to Adv is good to see with Team GEEK just missing the podium had Maciej Kulaszewski not been flying H/C. However, Alan Murphy put in a sterling effort on his first trip out, picking up Bronze.

Intermediate got going after a break around 3:00 with some longish gaps in the box due to pilot change overs and refuelling. No major hassle though and it didn’t take long to see the top spots would be dominated by Team G-TWOO and a well-deserved Bronze by Jez Burgion in his S2A. Matt Morris looks to be one to watch taking Gold in the White metallic camouflaged Extra 200. It’s worth pointing out that despite being a solo competitive challenge as it should be, this event demonstrated a very good team spirit particularly helped by several aircraft being shared by multiple pilots. While it makes longer gaps for the pilot change overs, it was clear these groups worked well together. Even at Advanced this was evident with the Finland reg CAP 232 team/partners working hand in hand or was that walking hand in hand! Team TWOO clearly had exemplary training in this regard as shown by their “after flight inspection with a cloth” Nice one Tom!

So back to the important things. Time was going to be tight with 25 pilots and a vital pee break was denied the judges. Coffee, Tea and Cake was supplied though in part compensation for a long afternoon. Clive and Emma Hughes kindly let us keep flying past the 5:00 close, with our final competition flight at 6:15 giving me just enough time to do a flight evaluation for Patrick Caruth in preparation for Saturdays event!

Saturday and the all-important Air Squadron Trophy is up for grabs along with some new aero blood flying Club in the T67 Firefly. Alas we can’t expect to fly in the UK every day and sadly the 08:31 briefing was greeted with 800ft grumpy weather. This did bring a small bonus of full English Breakfast for some (nice one Brian) but little else. The plan was quickly drawn up to only fly Apprentices and Masters interlaced with the Club pilots once flying could start as it was clear we would not get a full day flying in. Ever the optimist, the next few hours were filled with checking every weather system on the web and yet the warm front passing over had a cold front behind it holding in all the clag making the prospect of more than 1500ft very unlikely. One may have been tempted to knock it on the head at 11:00 but with many pilots having braved the North-South divide and the Irish Sea, what else could we do other than wait a while. Finally, after lunch around 2:00 we dispatch the medals and trophies for Friday’s flying and set the pilots on their way.

Of course, it didn’t end there as Team Geek couldn’t make it north of Boscombe and diverted to Bournemouth. And Nick Wakefield disappearing North West only to return 20 mins later. Things did improve reaching the dizzy height of 2000ft at Waltham and reports came in that Alan Murphy in his CAP 232 managed to finally get home to Ireland at 19:00 on Sunday!

The Air Squadron Trophy will be re set during the Tiger Trophy event at Leicester so that should make for a great competition. Thank you to all the Judging team and Jen for making my job easy and particularly the pilots for conducting themselves so well. I have had feedback from Emma that it was the best Aeros event they have ever had.