British Aerobatics - Open and National Championship, 2026 results
The CD's Report
Tuesday morning, after months of preparation from many people, CJ Steve Green and myself were on site welcoming the other officials along with inbound pilots starting with Ben Filer arriving nice and early from White Waltham as planned. This would be the warmup day for the pilots and last-minute tweaks for the rest of us, including box markers being flown in from Sleap. Thank you Bruce and Brian. Advanced and Unlimited pilots were given a 15-minute slot in the box to orientate and familiarise themselves with the airfield layout in readiness for kick off on Wednesday.
Briefing at 08:30 sharp for UNL and ADV with a plan to launch ADV first to give the judges a chance to warm up. It’s fair to say that they needed no warming up temperature wise as it was more like a continental competition than typical UK experiences. Having said that, on the first day it took an extra hour for the cloud base to rise sufficiently for the start. Meanwhile any remaining Sports and Intermediate pilots streamed in ready for their briefing at 13:00. This year we had a total of 24 Aresti pilots compared with 26 last year and interestingly 7 at UNL which is a good turnout including our welcome overseas visitors.
The judges came back from lunch and with a good amount of cloud about, Steve and I elected to stay with the easterly judging position for the afternoon. The best laid plans of Steve and Jules….. before we knew it 7/8’s became 2/8’s and Manfred Man pitched up and got all the judges singing
Blinded by the light……..
…………And go-kart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside.
Blinded by the light……..
Needless to say, for the rest of the week we started and stayed at the southerly judging position all day. This can be a little harder for the pilots as the A axis is perpendicular to the Hard runway.
This new challenge became apparent in part on Thursday when only a few pilots managed a clean unknown flight.
Never taking the WX for granted in the UK I pushed for an early start on Thursday and elected to put the Advanced pilots under pressure with two ADV sequences in the day to get us ahead. First and last of the day. A good gap but very tiring for them.
Friday and the WX is still giving, although the wind was picking up. Advanced now preparing for their last flight at the end of the day and all the others on their penultimate flight. The sun never blinked and so in memory of the wonderful Eric Marsh and some gentle prodding by Gerald, I organised an afternoon ice-cream break. Both Thursday and Friday were working lunches. A short break but remaining out in the field. This approach is a tough call for the judges but it gave us the opportunity to complete all the flights for all levels each day plus the bonus ADV on the Friday.
Saturday started with a 08:00 briefing and UNL flying first to give them a chance to recover for the Freestyle and allow the overseas visitors to prep for the journey home. By now it was clear that Sunday would not be quite so stable. Having got ahead earlier in the week we only had 3 sequences to fly but the wind was up approaching limits increasing the breaks, particularly in Sports category. While not penalised for the break at Sports, it does spoil the flow of the sequence and eats away at the flight rate. More importantly though it did help pilots stay in the box and remain above the height limits.
So, what about the flying and results.
Sports was a battle between Matt Schumann, Toby Read and Rich Gale. Matt held first place for two flights and then Unk#2 caught him out. Toby held consistent scores over 76% for every flight but in the end Unk#3 and a banger of a flight from Rich, with 82.4% gave him the top spot. It should be said that all the Sports pilots flew very well, particularly in the last unknown and although Adrian Read ended at the back of the pack, he still landed an impressive 74.9% in the Slingsby. But my hat goes off to Barbara Blythe. What a lady. Rushing home each night to look after her ailing husband, she was always smiling and ready for anything. It was a joy to see her having so much fun.
Intermediate started with 4 pilots, John McCarthy taking the top spot on day one, closely followed by Ruth Scott with only 0.9% between them. The first unknown caught Ruth and John out and Jacob Hinson jumped into the top spot with a tidy 71%. Sadly, John had technical issues on Friday morning, forcing him to pull out of the competition and robbing him of the chance to show the judges what he is made of. Unfortunately, Ruth fell foul of the cross-runway A axis on Unk#2, driving her in the wrong direction for most of the figures. No one managed a fully clean flight for Unk#3 but Jacob’s cool and consistently high scores secured him the top spot for Intermediate British Champion.
Advanced this year was low in numbers with only 5 pilots compared to 9 last year. The Known put David Heard in the lead to kick off and Ben Filer as tail end charley, when the fig 10 Inverted roller got the better of him, spoiling an otherwise tidy well positioned flight. For Unk#1 it was Gary Frederick’s turn to be bitten by the cross runway A axis and fly in the wrong direction. Nick Wakefield jumped into first place followed by David and then Ben with only 16 points overall behind him. Now the pressure was on and David put in a great unk#2 with 71.5% closely followed by Gary to show he knows what he is doing. That wasn’t enough to change the interim results other than Gary jumping up above Nick Riddin. Nick it should be said was flying well for his first time at Advanced, but collected a few HZ’s during Unk#2 pushing his score down. I didn’t make it easy for them and asked them to fly a second Unknown late on Friday. David couldn’t quite hang on to 2nd place overall with only 0.084% behind Ben. The clear winner however was Nick Wakefield, showing his experience and consistent scores won the day, demonstrating smooth calm and low RPM does the job just fine.
A first in the UK, perhaps worldwide. The trophy for Advanced National Champion, going to Nick Wakefield this year means both he and his wife Annabel are winners of the same trophy. Annabel won Advanced in 1996 in G-STUA, Alan Cassidy’s Pitts S2A. I don’t think it’s fair to say it took him 30 years to catch up with his wife, but hope Annabel can dine out on the idea for a while.
Unlimited had a respectable turnout this year with 7 competitors. 4 from overseas and 3 domestics. The open championship was a battle between Luxemburg and USA. Ekaterina Volkova (Kate) started in 1st place with only 0.26% separating 1st and 3rd place. Cyrial Talon flew very nicely in Unk#1 to jump ahead and keep 1st place overall after Unk#2 despite Kate’s better Unk#2 performance. Meanwhile Barrie Eeles from South Africa was starting to get a measure of the Extra 330 SC, borrowed from us in the UK, after only 4 flights in the machine.
In the end Kate kept her cool and was crowned Open Champion with 73.22%. A big shout out goes to Steve Bakhtiari taking 3rd in the Open and 1st place for the UK national champion. First year at Unlimited and some very fine flying.
Freestyle is a moment for all the other pilots and judges to sit back and enjoy the show. This year was no exception and finally we managed some music at the judging line thanks to Dave Nichols and Jacob Hinson. Mark Jefferies topped the UK scores but internationally he was pipped at the post by Cyrial Talon with exceptional positioning, having spent all week in the box.
…….And finally my vote for Pilot personality of the year goes to Philippe Varinot, representing Luxemburg, flying the lovely CAP 232 and bringing a calm entertaining attitude to the whole contest. Long may you continue to join us.
The launch rate that allowed us to do so well this year is mostly down to the close management of the flying order by Chris Sills my Deputy CD. Without him I don’t think we could have pulled off such a smooth comp. He didn’t tell me the final step count he put in this week, but it was quite a few miles. I strategically brought a push bike with me this year, which I can highly recommend ?
There are always things we can do better but I must say this event went very smoothly with very few noise complaints and a happy squadron of pilots. Thank you to our sponsors Alerion Collective, Ascent, the brandgym, Philip Meeson and G-IISC group. Without them this event would have been financially impossible and thank you to all the volunteers including Paul Bryce on weather duty and Jack in the tower at Sywell.
Julian Murfitt
Contest Director
Fly Safe Always
