Sometimes an event comes together with just the right mix of ingredients, though it doesn’t always seem that way at the early stages … The weather immediately prior to this event was not helpful, so the band of hopefuls at Saltby expecting to practice their way to a better standard had not seen much flying. Thus the evening scheduled for the collection of Advanced and Unlimited Free Unknown figures gave way for everyone there to make best use of the first clear skies for a while, and the figure collection chore was moved forward to a slot immediately after first briefing on the Thursday.

The glider aerobatic movement in the UK is never flush with numbers, this year’s fourteen being about par for the course. Only one Club driver came to the party, but in each of the other categories there was at least enough for a shoot-out for the three gongs on offer. The Sports class had some welcome new names, though above this it was more a matter of category progression by pilots gaining ever more experience. The limited training exercise of the preceding day unfortunately had also seen the the EuroFox tug side-lined, its Rotax engine finding a ‘Please visit your local Dealer’ panel red light that it wanted to show everyone, so for the first competition day we had just old faithful G-TUGZ to fulfil tugging duties. This led to a day of leisurely progress among the upper classes, and after some early cloud faded away things generally progressed quite well. David Gethin headed the first day’s Free Knowns for Intermediate, Joel Hallewell for theAdvanced pilots and a fine 74% put Paul Conran ahead of his two Unlimited colleagues.

Through a superb Friday / day-2 we pushed hard to get as far as possible, the addition of another borrowed Robin DR-400 in unusually Swiss attire helping things no end. This was a full day’s flying for sure, so much so that for Saturday the best option was to add one more Unknown to make it a full event at each level. It started well … then late in the morning the Cu erupted at 3,700ft so after a decent pause to check that it was going up (nope) we took an early lunch.

Curiously the 3,700 then became 3,500 and quite soon we just had to make a decision to go forward with that. Though a few pilots had already flown the full number of figures the only sensible solution was to cut each sequence back to seven, save of course for the Sports brigade for whom 3,500ft was just what they wanted anyway. By tea time all was done, and we repaired to the club house to put the final numbers together.

As seems to be the default now His Grace the Duke of Rutland came to make the awards just that bit more special, and you can see below how the competition details all came together at the conclusion. For openers however the three foodie-team girls each received some lovely flowers and a bottle of wine, head-office supremo Angie another well-deserved bouquet, Leif Culpin’s hard working panel of judges smiled gracefully for everyone’s congratulations, and Roger Hamilton’s on-airfield team of colleagues were given a big round of applause to recognise their tireless hard work.

For the pilots - Benjamin Ambler posted over 72% to fill the Club class all on his own, Mateusz Borkowski came very close to 80% at Sports, David Gethin – in the Swift at last – got even closer to that magic number to head the Intermediates, Joel Hallewell took Advanced by a clear margin in the Fox, and Dr. Dietmar guided G-LUPY as neatly as usual to pull ahead of Paul Conran’s Fox for the Unlimited brigade. The post-awards evening was a gem, the clear abundance of sporting friendship and reflected joy in the whole event a real pleasure to see.

Keep it up everyone, here’s to next year.