Competitions
In the early days the competitions were local Mayfield Cup comps where I never did very well, I think that I came second once. I went to Mere in Wiltshire several times; usually the weather was bad so sightseeing, Yeovilton air museum, (the prototype Concord is based here) was one of the main attractions. When it was flyable, one of the main memories are of me flying onto the back ridge of the bowl behind the rifle range and getting dropped nose first onto a barbed wire fence. I only pulled out at the last second so I then decided I would land near my tent, which was near the rifle range, only to get rotored, going vertically up and then down. I recovered to land safely but shaken. Another time I top landed on the west spine backed ridge by being pulled down by my front wires by two pilots.
On the occasion that I went to the Scottish Open, I remember arriving at 1.00
am in the morning and putting up my tent in daylight. The flying was quite
spectacular but also frightening, especially one flight where I was flying along
a very steep ridge and suddenly dropped 100ft. I had hit rotor from a ridge a
mile out in front. I learnt later that two years previously on the same ridge
Ralph Bygott, a pilot who I had flown with, had been killed after hitting the
same rotor.
In 1991 the Cayley Club got through the heats of the Airwave Challenge into the final. I don’t think that I had taken part in any of the heats but as they were short of pilots who could get the time off work I took part. The competition was held in Mid Wales at a site called Cemaise. The first day the sky was packed with gliders all trying to stay in the same thermal. After about 20 minutes I got tied of avoiding other pilots so I set off on my own on a glide down the valley. I kept finding small thermals that got me to the end of the valley but I needed something better to get me out of it. I saw some swifts circling out in front of me so I flew out towards them and hit a massive thermal, which would have got me out of the valley, but I lost it! This left me low down and only a field surrounded by power cables to land in. It was close but I squeezed in without any damage. The lift at the take off had disappeared so all the other pilots had done the same as me and flown down the valley, but by then the thermals had died down, so I was one of the pilots to fly the furthest and was joint first!
The
next day I went down 20 minutes after takeoff and scored nothing but the other
Cayley pilots did better. The last day was unflyable so, after a nail biting
score check the Cayley Club came first.