See you next year!

Well, the world championships are over for another year, and we think this is the best result we have ever achieved - winning 3 out of the 4 classes, with David grabbing silver in the 4th class. The medal ceremony is over, Paul Dewhurst being the only person on site wearing two medals, and preparations were made for the hangar party. After a very fierce flying competition, it was only natural for a party on a similar level.

The human side of the event came out, people were swapping stories, sharing experiences and planning the next time they would see each other. There may be the odd disagreement during the week, but I am glad to say that yet again the spirit of friendship shone through. Oh, and a few fun and games, like the time the French decided to ambush our photos.



The team are on now their way home, expecting to arrive in the next few days. A job very well done. Look out for the European Championships in 2008, possibly in Poland and make a date to come along to support our team. One question remains though - why was there a 15ft high piece of tree in the hangar this morning?? BONSAI!

Medals!

Paul Dewhurst and Paul Welsh - World Champions 2 seat fixed wing

Rob Grimwood and Chris Saysell - World Champions 2 seat flexwing

Richard Rawes - World Champion single seat flexwing

David Broom - Silver medal single seat fixed wing

Rob & Rees Keene - Bronze medal 2 seat flexwing

Team Silver medal. The boys done good. To have three out of four world champions proves that the British team are the dominant force in world microlighting.

Congratulations to all of our pilots, and especially to all of our medal winners. BONSAI!

Saturday - scores on the doors ??

**NOTE** The scores are not yet final!

After yesterdays final task there were some tense hours waiting for the final scores. In all the medal positions it was so tight and a missed photo or marker could be the difference between 1st and fourth. The results were announced at 7pm (very prompt ) and it looks like there are 3 golds - Richard, Paul and Paul, Rob and Chris, Silver - Dave and Bronze -Robbie and Reece. We have Silver in the team and Gold in the unofficial Weightshift team prize. In all a pretty impressive haul ! - As always the ink is still drying and they are still provisional and could change(subject to the last minute protest ! ) so we are now waiting - a few of us have flown this morning and had some enjoyable flights. -Owain

see czech website for scores

The flying is finished

We ended up flying a nav task on Friday afternoon in very nice conditions, fairly light wind and light broken cloud, ending with another precision landing. We knew it would be the last task, nerves were high, we had a lot to lose. Pilots came back mostly reporting an OK flight, not necessarily barnstormingly fantastic, but good solid points. Relief.



That's it! Flying over, unless you count Paul and David flying little model planes in and out the tent. There hasn't been too much flying this year, but the tasks themselves have been good (or really hard, take your pick). So, Friday night was de-stress night, Sue cooked up another fantastic meal, and the team was able to relax. This is Sue standing next to Anita with Simon sitting by his tent.



I hate this part of the championships - the scores are out, but they are provisional at this stage. If they don't change then we will have two world champions and lots of other truly excellent results. But it is a big 'if' - now is the time for complaints and protests as competitors can see a medal just out of reach so they try to reclaim whatever points they can. Scores can change, we'll just have to wait for any Jury decisions to be made public before we can actually relax properly. More nervous times.



And... the British team always tries to help. Here's a picture of Richard's family, from left to right are Jessica, wife Jeanette and Holly. I hope this makes a certain Grandmother proud.

Fog stops play

An early start today, first take-off at 0800. We had to line up in start order, then be given the task information (map, photos etc) with 30 minutes to prepare.

The first ten planes got away, the next ten were already in the 30 minute planning quarantine period, when word was spread that the task was cancelled. The first Czech competitors had found fog on the track so they broke the seal on their mobile phones and called the competition director. It's a beautiful day here, sunny with light winds, the fog will only have lasted an hour or so more.



This is Mathieu Bernard (yes, he's French) with a complicated map board complete with pins, string and stickers to help with the in-flight nav planning. We've had a team leader meeting, the general consensus is to fly a different nav task later today so the organisers are getting a reserve task ready, hopefully we'll be off by 3pm.

Penultimate night

After todays horrendously complicated nav task was postponed due to the weather, the wind died down enough to allow us to fly an engine-off spot landing. With the scores so close, the pressure levels were high, with everyone fully aware that this could be the make or break of a World Championship title.
In quite difficult crosswind conditions, the Pauls (Dewhurst and Welsh) screamed into the deck to collect a healthy 200pts, ensuring they enter the final day with a healthy lead.
Richard Rawes nailed the 250, while unfortunately David Hadley dropped ever-so-slightly short and Owain judged the range right but wasn't quite able to correct the crosswind drift angle enough and drifted slightly out of the deck.
I disappeared below the horizon on my spot landing, but the 'fishing float' Shadow lived up to its name and sailed neatly into the 250 box. I was extremely chuffed to receive a coveted Team Bonzai sticker for amusing the crowd; any gold medal pales in comparison!
The spots mixed up the two-seat flexwing class nicely, with the leader (Andre Thuroczy) dropping short to allow Rob Grimwood & Chris Saysell to regain the lead, with Rob & Rees Keene just 62 points behind in 3rd place. Richard Rawes has over 200pts lead in his class, and I go into the last day just 17 points behind Jan Lukes in the solo fixed-wing class.
As such, it's all to play for tomorrow, with the same complicated task due to be flown early tomorrow morning. Judging from the previous nav task, it could go either way very easily, and with all 4 classes so closely contested the pressure is on to fly well tomorrow.
Wish us luck!
Dave Broom.

Lazy day

Well, what was supposed to be another tricky flying day took a different turn when the organisers called the task off, something to do with the howling wind and thermals, making a roller coaster of a sky. Time to catch up on some meditation.



See the flag on the right of the Aeroprakts. Nice plane, really noisy though - you can pick it out from the other planes when it's starting up.



Several of us took the opportunity to get away from the airfield and there's a good swimming pool nearby. Others sat in the shade (it's hot out of the wind) and chatted. Here's Rob Grimwood's fiancée Louise with Malcolm on her left. Malcolm forms half of a team, last year they were known as the Chuckle Brothers or International Rescue, they fetch, carry, cook, clean, and generally make life a little easier for us all. Another addition to camp is Naomi, she was official cook and helper last year, this year she's official girlfriend to Chris. I'll see if she succeeds in avoiding the camera too.



And below is Malcolm. The wind has died a little, the organisers have announced a spot landing task, first take off in 15 minutes so we'd better get going.

Thursday. Uh-oh.

Yesterday was odd. Flying was cancelled because of the rain forecast, so most of the camp went in two buses to Prague to the Aviation museum... 6 hours in a non air-conditioned bus for 2 hours in the museum, though it was apparently pretty good.

The rain came before lunchtime, a bit of wetness for about 90 minutes then the skies cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day, the evening conditions were calm and many took advantage of the perfect conditions to do a bit of engine-off spot landing practice. Except for those who went to Prague and were still on the way back, of course. One of the buses was quite new, the rumour was that it didn't have the necessary 'tax' sticker on its new windscreen to be able to use the motorways so it did a tour of Czech instead. The first bus load returned in time for a bit of evening flying and they'd stopped at McDonalds. The second bus finally got back just in time for the start of a hangar party.

Parties mid-week are a bit odd. There's the marshals and others who are quite happy to sink a glass of Pils, a few team leaders and maybe the odd (slightly less committed) pilot too. A couple of Brits were seen enjoying themselves, but nothing too outrageous. That was left to the South Africans and the French who engaged in beer mat wars - a fantastic sight, seeing 20 people launch a thousand beer mats at the other team accompanying it all with a huge tribal cheer. Then South African Rob McFie played his ace card - a high powered water gun, capable of clearing a hangar in seconds. Hmm...

It was all good fun, in measured quantities. These competitions are very social occasions, many of the competitors are long time friends who meet once a year. The flying is intense, today's task looks set to be another nasty one. It's a navigation exercise, but will require pilots to draw circles on their maps while flying and trying to find photos/markers. It's not easy for 2 seat crews, so very challenging for solo flyers. The wind is shaking the trees too, I doubt there'll be much of a party atmosphere in the tent tonight.

Hard or what?

Team Godfather Paul Dewhurst has been competing since 1990. In the last 17 years he has not won a medal in only three competitions, and on two of those occasions he was 4th. His first reaction after the task yesterday was to say "that was the most difficult task I have ever flown". He finally stopped fidgeting long enough for a picture too.



By the time the solo trikes got going, it was windy. I mean, it was blowing a good 20kt on the ground and tempers were short, especially on the part of Rawesy when he found that a French trike was parked in his allocated spot. Here's Owain shortly before receiving the photos.



The task only took about 90 mins to fly, but we had to sit around in quarantine waiting for everyone else to land, so runners were sent to get bottled beer. Good time for a bit of lazy chat and descriptions of staring doom in the face while trying to hang on the the bar for dear life. It was particularly gnawing for some, you just had to grin and bear it, show those pearly whites and bite down. I'm sure I could hear the grinding of teeth at one point... and I was right. Poor Simon was asking for Superglue later to fix his teeth - he'd actually broken them while getting kicked around the sky!



If it's tales of death-defying stunts and courageous resilience then Hadders is your man. I can't remember the details, but I think he said he was flying backwards, swerving through the trees as he was sucked in by an earthquake, his leg had been severed, his fingers numb through frostbite, yet despite temporary blindness he managed to avoid a grizzly bear while single-handedly fighting off the Spanish Armada. He's not the tallest bloke in the team (he wouldn't be the tallest bloke in the Dwarf Olympics either) but he's built of pure steel - witness the "Mr Muscle" arms, the trademark of a true Chaser pilot.



The scores are out, mixed results for some, an absolute stormer for Frank and Brad, and Paul "You disa-respecta ma familia?" and the boffin are successfully not losing points. Here's a very serious team meeting to discuss the intricacies of the rules and detailed plan of attack for the next day.



There's no flying today (Wednesday). The rainfall radar is not very spesh, and the organisers have laid on buses to Prague, about 2 hours away. Day off, then.

to be FRANK, a mixed day !

Wednesday morning - team marquee- early

Everybody is recovering from yesterdays task, a very mixed day when the weather conditions made for some very interesting flying and some significant changes on the scores. The task was a type of sequential nav on two circles. The intention being that you would fly around the outer circle until seeing a photo; you would then turn onto the inner circle and fly that and so on.Imagine trying to turn a target into cog. Miss a marker and you would carry on oblivious until picking back up on the correct circle-some pilots returned with more teeth than others.The organisers upped the workload considerable by also adding a ground speed score to the task -oh and a few other markers on/off track as well .... and 20kt winds!



The planning part of the task enabled several members of the team to demonstrate their Blue Peter Skills with various shapes and templates being manufactured from Acetate and card. The take off window was large with competitors being separated by 3 minute gaps. In the single seat weightshift Richard had another good day and coming third in the task -interestingly the task was won by Robert Gassman who decided to fly without groundspeed and concentrate on the nav. David Hadley and Myself had frustrating days, both of us missing the first ground marker and spending alot of time flying on the inner circle when we should have been on the outer one. The start of the task was a little lively in and amongst the valleys and I managed to fly backwards into the start gate whilst Hadley spent rather a long time looking at a wood! In Dave Brooms class Dave lost a little more points to leader Jan Lukas (czech). In the very close two seat weightshift class Grimwood, Keene and Baker were all upstaged by a stunning performance from Frank and Brad. Frank wisely concentrated on Nav and achieved 3rd in class Whilst the others languished in the lower order. This has dropped Rob and Chris down to third and Robbie into Fourth. Simon is currently in ninth. In the the 2 seat fixed wing the Pauls won the task with typically reliable performance. They now lead the class by a comfortable 417 points.



With three days it is all to play for - in all classes one mistake can be fatal for medal aspirations. The organisers have promised an even more complicated task and with another economy task to come there is alot to gain and even more to loose! . Its just started to Rain ! - and Richard Rawes has just asked "has anybody got a spare front strut"!

link to the excellent official scores website

Tuesday morning

0750 here, the weather is not very special, low cloud and it's been raining a fair bit. There's a team leader's briefing in 10 mins, we'll find out what's in store for the rest of the day.

Update - today's task is navigation, a complicated thing involving two circles, markers, photos, turnpoints and having to fly between the circles. Take off time is scheduled for 12 noon, but the weather is looking very un-clever with storms forecast. If we don't do the nav today, we're preparing for two precision landings tonight.

Here's hoping for some better weather soon. Apparently it's all the Germans' fault, it's raining there.

round and round - fuel duration -Mon night

Monday night - Marquee

Scores are now published for the fuel duration task and things are looking rosy for the British Team. Most pilots consolidated their promising start and managed some impressive duration times. This consolidated their position and now means that this quite tricky task is out of the way. Dave Broom was pleased with the relatively small loss(500pts) to his competitors (flying very slippery machines! ) Grimwood, Baker and Keene all returned strong scores and this should keep them firmly attached to the top of the leaderboard. Richard Rawes and David Hadley both scored well in their chasers. In the WL1 class local favourite Lukas Hynek landed short and dropped him down to 7th - as Paul Dewhurst said "points are lost - not won!! "


Its chucking it down now and we are hoping for good weather tomorrow. Its nice to see the high percentage of British flags on the results page, ! official results

Electric trims

You can't have 'another' electric trim without having the first one. There are a couple of these French things, called DTA Combos (AKA 'surf and turf') and they seem to be missing a front strut. Erm... not for me, thanks.

This is Jury President Jan van der Hayden having a peek.

Monday and a walk down the line while the fuel was being issued for today's Duration (thermals) task showed up another electric trim. This one looks neat.



Rob and Chris finally succumbed to the camera. Somehow Foggy's still not posed for his mugshot, I think it's the pressure of being team leader that's added 15 years to his boyish good looks and he doesn't want a record of the new wrinkles on his brow. Rob's fiancée Louise has arrived, so Chris is worried Rob's concentration might stray. Rumour is there's nothing to worry about, certain relaxation methods are subject to a competition embargo, or so they say, I could not possibly comment.

Rob Grimwood is CFI at Plaistows and current World Champion.



Chris Saysell is Rob's P2, he is also current World Champion.



They posed for a hero shot. It was a bad time for Rob Keene to decide to nick their funnel, we've got the evidence, Rob, don't deny it!



Single seaters had 7kg (about 10 litres) of fuel, 2 seaters had 10kg. The conditions are a bit funny, almost everyone had taken off within 15 minutes of the 13:45 start time, there was a fair bit of wind, some fluffy clouds, a bit of menacing black stuff downwind and then a thin layer of high cloud creeping across (which would kill off any thermals). This much fuel is enough for at least 2 hours in a Chaser, though with a bit of luck in the rising air, we might be waiting several hours more before the last ones get to the beer tent. The flying window closes at 19:30.

The event director is over the worst of his fever, so his military style of team leader briefings will resume tonight, no doubt. He struts across the front of the room with a small flag in his hand, it reminds me of the SS character in 'Allo 'Allo. He will only say it once.

Fuelling was reasonably efficient, it still took about 3 hours though. It's now a question of waiting for our brave flying heroes to return. Oh, and Hadders, who was tossing up whether or not to do a quick circuit and then get some kip. He doesn't like this task.

Lukas Hynek (Czech team) with a very nice single seater, an even nicer HKS installation.

The scores on the doors Richard Rawes !

Monday morning

After yesterdays fairly intense task this morning has been a little more relaxed. The organisors have settled for a a very simple task - Fuel duration - they have given us a lot of fuel which should mean a few numb bums. We are currently waiting for the weather and the go ahead from the organisers - it looks 50/50 at the moment - most of us are hoping it will go ahead- otherwise its a long day !

Yesterdays scores are now out and the Team is making good progress - Richard Rawes is ahead in WL1, in Wl2 the usual suspects are in the mix and extremely closely matched - the Grimwood / Saysell combo has only dropped 17 points out of a possible 3000. This class is the most closely contested and any small mistake could mean dropping out of the top six. The Pauls are in a strong position and it will be interesting to see how they fair in today's tasks against the Ukraine's slippery machines. Dave "the angel" Broom is leading the way in his class and is looking quietly confident. See the official website for scores and team prize - these are subject to change as the week progresses, this does change with the wind direction and nothing is certain until the final scores. Owain

Tim Keene dons the washing up gloves !

Day 2

It's day 2 here at WMC2007, and already the stress has got to the comp director. He's been off all day with a fever (although a number of witnesses had him drinking copious amounts the night before). It might be due to the slightly suspect sausage served in the canteen that has put some of our Chaser pilots off colour today.
Finally had some meaty tasks to get our teeth into today, with 2 seperate nav tasks finished by precision landings. With the comp director absent, no-one could find the correct photos for task 1, so that was slightly easier than intended, allowing us to wake up slightly before the utterly manic spot touch-and-go and the second nav task. This was very busy, especially for the solo pilots. In one case Owain Johns spotted a marker but didn't have time to mark it in the turbulent conditions.
Most of us had a reasonable day, except David Hadley (who traditionally makes a mistake on the 1st day and then performs brilliantly for the rest of the week), who got slightly lost. However, we're still waiting for the scores to come out, so we don't know for sure.
There are some good photos and videos (especially of some slightly dodgy landings) on the official website at www.czechinfo.aero, well worth a look.
Anyway, off to the bar now; soaring task tomorrow, so minimum planning required. Just fuel up, take off, fly until you run out of fuel, and land. How hard can it be?!?
Dave Broom.

Shorts and Bonsai!

Dr Paul only owns two pairs of shorts, the loud red ones and the loud blue ones. This makes washing a desirable activity. Desirable by the rest of us.



"Team Bonsai" - this was something to do with Owain, Hadders and Rob Keene, and a rather large branch of a tree. Owain's blog describes it well, and those honoured to join this esteemed club get to wear their team shirt with pride.

Marshals

All the officials have different colours - jury/stewards are in yellow, marshals are in orange. Not sure why I took this pic of nice marshal Dennis and some random woman. In fact I hadn't noticed the woman until just now. Strange, that.

Tasks 2, 3, 4, 5

Sunday. Deck take-off, then a navigation task, having to exactly follow lines on the chart, looking for photos and markers, and all at a pre-declared ground speed. Then a precision landing at an outfield, except it was a touch and go, since it was also the start of the next nav task, following a series of curves and looking for photos/markers. The task ended with a precision landing - this is landing in a box 100m by 25m, divided into sections which score different points. The closer you land to the start of the box, the more points you get. Quite a few good scores in the final landing, we got a few 250 points in the bag.

One minor hitch was that Competition Director Jan Hyncica is in bed with a fever, so things didn't go quite as smoothly since deputy Jan Bem had to step in. They couldn't decide which photos were to be used for the first nav task, so there were none! We were given a sheet saying 'no photos for task 2'. Made life a little bit easier. Jan (Hyncica) must be allergic to dancing, since he was leading the way at the opening ceremony party last night.

After landing, we had to go into a quarantine area and were given 15 mins to mark up where we thought we'd seen photos or markers. There's loads of marshals, and after a few warm up glitches things seem to be better run on the ground. Here's Hadders about to mark the spot with an X.



Owain, scrutinising his map carefully.



It was hard work today. It's got blowy so the groundspeed bit was difficult. There's now free flying while we weigh fuel for an efficiency task tomorrow, briefing later this evening.

Team photo

Foggy (AKA Paul Dewhurst) didn't manage to avoid the camera this time (he's on the right of the GB sign.



Task 1 started at 16:30 while a load of the public were still around (big crowd for the airshow). A precision timed landing - take off out of a 100m long deck, then exactly 4 mins later land in another deck, scoring points for time accuracy and also how close you landed to the start of the deck. Once established on final, you weren't allowed to deviate more than 45 degrees.

Task 1.5 was the hangar party to mark the start of the comp, complete with a band doing Abba covers, and (as soon as the fantastic and cheap beer took effect) lots of dancing too. Prices are cheap here, in the team tent we're charging ourselves 10 czech crowns per beer, which is about 27 pence. And Czech beer is delicious too.

The Team 2007

This is who we are. Somehow team leader Paul Dewhurst and also Rob Grimwood and Chris Saysell managed to avoid the camera. So far, anyway. Perhaps it's a champion's prerogative? Paul is current World and European champion, Rob and Chris are current World Champions, they missed out on the European title by 4 points last year.

Anita Holmes is co-pilot to Simon



Simono Baker in a P&M GT450



Richard Rawes, current European Champion, Chaser 508



Rocket Scientist Dr Paul Welsh, sitting next to Paul Dewhurst



Owain Johns, in a Chaser 508 generously loaned by Nigel Beale at Skydrive.



Family Keene, they turned up in wellies, I think they were expecting rain (their Gloucestershire farm resembled the North Sea in the recent floods). From left to right, Tim, Rees (co-pilot), Sue (Chief Cook) and Rob. Rob and Rees are flying in a sponsored P&M GT450.



David Hadley (Hadders) in a Chaser 508. Plane is still in one piece... Behind him is Richard, recently de-mobbed from the RAF, I think it's had an effect on him.



Frank Hodgson, Quantum 912



Chris & Claire Wills, taildragger Escapade 912















David Broom, 503 Shadow



Brad Wagenhauser, copilot to Frank in the Quantum



















Time to find pictures of the others.

Saturday - Opening Ceremony

Part 2 of the general briefing was carried over from Friday night (it was nearing 11pm and Competition Director Jan Hyncica was threatening to go on for another hour) so we had more talking until around 10am. While Team Leader Paul and Rob Keene were listening to yet more procedure, we had to line planes up in start order, ready for task one later in the day. Flying on day one - not the norm...

Then at 12pm, two military training jets woke us up, doing lots of low passes and signalling the start of a 3 hour air show, with all sorts including wooden Czech planes, ultra-quiet Vanessa Air VL3s (just amazed at how quiet they were) and ending with WW1 replicas engaged in dog fighting. Here's the VL3s.



Then the opening ceremony itself. We formed a square and a load of official stuff was said in Czech, followed by Max Bishop, Secretary General of the FAI, who declared the show was open.

Owain's blog

Read Owain's blog while waiting for us to sort out a few technical issues.

We're here

We got here, no mishaps on the way, though a few salty stories of daring flying. Lots of catching up to do.



The pilots' room is not a room at all. It's a bus, complete with photocopier and admin staff who sit on the regular bus seats! Here's the canteen/bar area, of course no beer drinking goes on at all.



Not even by Chris and Claire Wills, husband and wife team in an Escapade 912.

More later.

Some photos

The organisers have posted some photos on the official website.

On the way

Most of the team have now left the UK. Several have started the 1000 mile trip today, with many flying their competition planes out to Usti Nad Orlici. The team van has also left, driven by Owain Johns, who will be competing in the solo flexwing (WL1) class in a 508 Chaser.

The weather forecast for central Europe is not brilliant, but the team should arrive by Monday or Tuesday, so that they can get a few days practice in before the competition flying starts on Sunday.

The Czech have created a website for the championships - click here to take a look. Also, click on any image in this blog to see a bigger version.

Welcome!

A blog of the British Microlight team at the World Microlight Championships 2007 - we'll start on Friday August 17th, and the competition itself kicks off on Saturday August 18th.

See you then!