.... but losing two is disastrous for your competition!

This morning's sky looked awesome, and the forecast was for good wave all day. Robert set an interesting Assigned Area Task  - a quadrilateral tour of the gliding sites at Feshie, Portmoak and Aboyne - but with 200 km radius round Portmoak so you could actually (just) complete the task with an out-and-return to where all three sectors intersected somewhere on Deeside.

The first three pundits were duly launched, then misfortune struck. The engine of the yellow Eurofox overheated, and tuggie Colin had to dump Geddes at just 2000 feet, turn off the engine, and make a 'dead-stick' landing, which he accomplished flawlessly.

This was followed by the disaster when the red Eurofox too began to make a new noise and was taken off line for investigation. Despite much investigation, head-shaking and a couple of test runs, the root of the problem could not be found.

We then offered winch launches to anyone current on winch launching, but had to wait while the winch battery was charged enough to start the engine. One or two did have a go, but no-one managed to connect with the wave. We were impressed to see the ASH25, with engine and two on board, winch launched to 1200 feet.

Meantime Geddes had spent some time in rotor but could not contact the wave. Roy G, who had decided just to go flying before briefing and not to bother competing, managed to achieve the task without planning to, which doesn't count.

In the fullness of time the remaining pundits began to trickle back, and shortly after the last one landed, Robert and John had completed the scoring and the prizegiving was held. Roy W, with an impressive 341.2 km in conditions that were not easy, scored 1000 points, with Graham runner-up on 780 points. Someone who had best remain nameless achieved the smallest possible positive score of just one point.

Over the two days, the total scores were Deeside 1272 points, Portmoak A 1021 points, Highland 525 points, Cairngorm 222, Fulmar 132 and Portmoak B 74 points.

Despite disappointing weather on Day 1 and technical problems on Day 2, most departing visitors were heard to say that they had enjoyed the weekend. Even Sant, who got stuck in the trailer park and had to have both trailer and car towed out backwards.

Special mention was made of the catering, and warm thanks go to (in no particular order) Trish, Mike B, Mike L and Phil for all their hard work.

We look forward to the next leg, at Portmoak in August.