After the cold front had come through on Wednesday morning the cold air and hot ground was ideal for creating thermals, so Thursday was allocated to a soaring task. The two seaters were given 14 kg of fuel and the single seaters 9 kg. The task started with a deck takeoff and ended with a deck landing, after which aircraft had to taxi to the checking area where fuel tank seals were checked.
Fueling took almost 3 hours, the fuel having been weighed the day before. The teams were paired off to check each other's draining and fuelling. Our partners were the French and I must say that the whole thing was very cordially done, which was to be of great benefit later. Rob Grimwood displayed an as yet unrecognised talent for sucking the dregs of fuel out of French tanks. The more squeamish amongst you will be relieved to hear that he did not swallow. There were too few marshals to keep up with sealing the tanks so we stood around and chatted with our French counterparts while we waited.
Once the last had fuelled, first away were Ukranians, Yuri Yakovlev & Igor Pugach, in their very nice Aeroprakt. They were regarded by hot favourites in the dual 3-axis class by everyone, including our best, Paul Dewhurst and David Hadley, who took off reasonably soon afterwards. At first many microlights circled over the airfield, going up as far as cloudbase where the lift reduced under cumulus clouds that were soon past their best. However, the thermals seemed to move downwind and soon the skies overhead were almost clear of aircraft. Then we waited.
The first bit of news we heard was bad. Simon Baker and Anita Holmes, in one of the 3 GT450s, was down with an electrical failure. Len Tanner and Malcolm Finch immediately set out to find them, performing what Simon described as the quickest recovery he could remember.
One by one the other aircraft came in. The flying window was set to close at sunset, 8:00 pm, and as the sun started to sink Yuri and Paul flew overhead. Our thought (and Paul's we later heard) was that they would fly together until the time ran out and then come in at the same time. Yuri then surprised us by breaking away and landing, leaving Paul alone. He bimbled around in the overhead, any free lift being long gone, and patiently waited another half hour or more until sunset, when he landed with a litre of fuel remaining. We were all there to greet them, cheering and waving the flag, an odd bunch of Brits making a fuss on an empty airfield in the gathering gloom. It felt really great. They had been up for 6 hours 47 minutes, some 28 minutes longer than the Ukranians, of which over half had been flown engine off, not bad for a boring old rag and tube microlight.
The story does not quite end there. There was some confusion over the tank sealing and we spent a tense half hour trying to get hold of the French Team Leader who had witnessed the process. In the end he came back early from his dinner in Leszno, together with Joel Amiable, the French Jury President, and confirmed that all was well. This was very good of them and typical of the great atmosphere which exists between the teams at this competition.
The flexwings had some notable achievements, Endre Thuroczy & Ferenc Hojec stayed out in their 912 Apollofor 5 hrs 35 mins while Rob Grimwood & Chris Saysell were second with 5 hrs 1 min. Richard Rawes took 3rd place in the solo flexwing class flying for 4 hrs 34 mins.
