It's Nationals Time...

The Nationals kicked off with a bit of trouble with our aircraft. We fly with bicycle cleats on the pedals as they clip our feet in place for all our manoeuvres. Unfortunately one of these snapped. We managed to get it sorted after the contest had got started thanks to a lot of work from Mike and a safety check from Gerald. Thanks go to John Askew for lending us his pedals for the competition! In the rush I didn't put in a great first flight but Mike flew an absolute blinder coming first in the known programme. We both did good flights for our free programmes with Mike remaining in first overall. The two unknowns were flown in pretty strong winds (well outside the limits for international competitions!) making them quite a challenge, especially for those moving up to advanced this year. In the end we came 5th and 6th overall with very little between our scores. This was enough for us both to qualify for the Europeans this year and help us qualify for the World Championships next year and was an amazing performance from Mike in his first year at Advanced! This is quite exciting, although a little daunting at the same time! Congratulations to Phil Burgess, the new British Advanced National champion and Gerald Cooper who retains the Unlimited title!

Thanks to Sarah Hardy for the photo - this is me about to take off for one of my competition flights.