Once in a very long while the sky is blue, the wind moderate and the CD has no difficult decisions to make. To my delight and relief, this year was the one!

The Dan Smith is the London Gliding Club's home aerobatic competition. I am very grateful to the guys in charge of flying on the day, Ryan Berry and Tom Sage, that we were given priority. With no winch-launching going on, two K21 gliders and two Robin tugs to ourselves, and with a separate launch-point, we were able to crack on brilliantly.

This competition is a great leveller. All competitors, regardless of their usual standard, fly Sports sequences; one known, one unknown, in the same two-seater trainers. The top three get BAeA medals but the lovely wooden looping-glider Dan Smith trophy can only be won by the top-scoring Sports pilot. The format makes it huge fun and attracts truly international rivalry. This year we had two polish aerobatic team members, and previous World Champions, Maciej Posieszynski and Slawek Talowski. From the Czech aerobatic team  Jan Rolinek, with our own British team pilots, Paul Conran and Graham Saw. Two Intermediate flyers, Steve Hardy and Michael Corcoran took part, while the “real” Sports trio, Rod Herve, Jan Wozny and last-minute entrant Mike Marshall made up the ten entrants.

This year we launched to 3000 feet with box base at 1000. This worked very well as the Sports programmes are not height-hungry (no lows were scored), but it speeded up the launch rate significantly. The reduced aero-tow cost was popular with the pilots, too (but we got it all back off them over the bar later!)

Under blue sky with barely a smudge of cloud until mid-afternoon everyone had flown the known by 2.0....and that was with one of the gliders having a technical snag quite early on. (Thanks to Ryan Berry and Graham Saw and new rudder cable swages it was fixed and signed-off in time for round two).

The standard of flying was impressively good. Newcomers Jan Wozny and Mike Marshall, both flying with safety pilots, scored very well and stayed in the box. Michael Corcoran flew lovely figures, some of which the judges could see until he disappeared over Dunstable but, thankfully, he landed back on the airfield. All the rest scored high seventies or low eighties keeping it very competitive for the unknown.

We allowed ourselves the rare luxury of a lunch hour and started back at just after three. With the two aircraft again available the ten flights were done by 5.30...and we had a full comp! The rain started at six, just as forecast. A happy and enjoyable day indeed.