One-design events have tried hard to muscle their way into the sports aerobatic scene a few times over the years, but somehow have never quite caught on – valiant attempts by the Dan Rihn DR-107 brigade in both the US and here have generally foundered because not only are there rarely enough examples of the breed but being home-builds they tend to be sufficiently different that it’s hard to accept that the “One Design” principle does produce “One Result” aeroplanes … and anyway, surely the most iconic single design theme in aerobatics has been Curtis Pitts’ wonderful little biplane, now an astonishing 70 years since its first flight in August 1945. The Pitts Special we know now comes in many versions and sizes, though all conform to the basic principles that Curtis got so right seven decades ago. And popular they certainly are too, there being more than 120 of the little blighters registered in the UK alone.

A celebratory aerobatic contest for just Pitts Specials was therefore a ‘must’ for the BAeA, and this event at lovely Sleap airfield in most rural Shropshire turned out to be a gem. Most types of Pitts were present, but it really didn’t matter which one you had – as usual it’s the way you fly them that makes the difference, skill and ability being the true determinants.

We did expect two Beginners but on the day only Ian Turner in G-PIIT made the trip … and so wrapped up his first competitions flights in fine style; move up, Ian! The main task on day-1 however was an Unknown sequence for each level, and with no Unlimited aces present that meant a goodly field of thirteen Standard, Intermediate and Advanced pilots all competing ‘Tiger Trophy’ style and thus on a percentage basis. There being a comfortable amount of time to get this done as the cloud-base rose quickly through the desired 2,800ft after the briefing, your CD immediately doubled the flying opportunities by tasking pilots to fly twice – but with the second trip in the reverse wind direction, in the vain hope that this might fool a few into turning the wrong way and collecting an HZ or two. After the first round Simon Hampton in G-MAXG headed the queue from relative newbie Tom Milsom in G-ODDS, closely chased by far-from-novice Tim Barnby in his delightful and suitable minty looking G-MINT. With the sequence direction reversed however Tim scrambled further up the ladder from Brian (also in MAXG) and Simon, the aggregate result order being Simon – Mark - Tim. It was such good fun too, smiles and congrats all round.

For our second day we spent the morning flying BAeA’s own version of mild insanity fairly close to the Aresti world, the Intermediate Apprentices round going to Patrick Caruth in newly acquired S-1T N-11N closely followed by colleague Luke Goddard in the very same machine, with local ace Alex Cartwright finishing a close third. Next up the three Advanced pilots battled their way through the Masters sequence, here Tim Barnby’s S1 experience showing a clean pair of heels to Brian McCartney, with Chris Sills in S-2A G-BTUL striving to get the two-seater around this energy sapping stuff.

And finally to the proper fun part of the weekend – the BAeA speed version of the Standard Known. Here pilots at all levels flew this relatively simple sequence but with the added incentive of receiving penalty points if the set target time was exceeded. For 2015 we took the ’14 target of 2m30s as our first aiming point, but clearly this was far too easy – only one pilot failing to get his sequence completed within this time. For the top-scoring 8 pilots and round-2 therefore your CD reduced the bogey-time to 2m exactly, but by now it was clear that even that was a beatable target – a remarkably tidy 1m44s from Tim being the shortest but with a score that dropped him to 4th, though three seconds quicker than Lauren Richardson in Tim’s old G-BKDR. The opinions from the judges however placed the top three as Lauren, Jan Nijhof in S-1T N-196JR (all the way from Lelystad in the Netherlands) and Brian, and in the final shoot-out it was Brian who put in the highest scoring performance, the times all being remarkably close between 1m41s from Jan and 1m47 from Lauren, Brian’s 1m45s seeming almost leisurely … phew!!

And finally, before Richard Goodwin gave us a bellowing taste of just what a ‘muscle biplane’ can do with oh-so-smoky G-EWIZ, Shropshire Aero Club’s Antoine Schlijper made his way around all the Pitts present to decide which was most deserving of the Concours D’elegance prize. The answer was lovely little G-MINT, and thus Tim became the proud owner of a very good looking pack of aeroplane cleaning kit. Yeah yeah, everyones’ favourite task, I know, but at least now a trifle easier for Tim.

So – a really memorable event in great company at a lovely airfield, with pretty good English summer weather too. It actually doesn’t come much better than this, and our very considerable thanks go to the Shropshire Aero Club for letting us all share their lovely base.