We had a terrific long weekend at Temora. The weather challenged us at times but only resulted in minor delays and some extreme wind conditions on the final day of flying.
I flew across to Temora on the Thursday for some final practice prior to the comp starting. On Friday morning I arrived at the hangar to find a flat tyre, I've never had one before and now it happens at the comp...anyway, that mostly ruined my practice day, I eventually got it fixed thanks to great support from the locals at Temora (mainly Grant Booth aka Captain Kaos).
The Qualifying flight for Advanced on the Saturday morning could have gone better but at least I qualified! The first actual competition flight, the "Free" sequence was later that day. My first attempt was an air abort due to cloud in the box. After about an hour it was OK and I launched again with only minor cloud in my way. The flight felt very good and scored the same. This resulted in me winning that flight and giving me a good lead over the next competitor, Russell Bell (from New Zealand). The next day we flew the "First Unknown", I thought I had flown it clean but one of my rollers got zeroed (to be honest it was a poorly flown roller). The rest of the flight scored very well but that zero gave Russ the win for that flight and left us about even going into the final flight, the "Second Unknown". This was the first time I had flown an "Advanced Second Unknown" which are known to be notoriously difficult. This one was reasonably challenging, plus we had over 30 knots of wind to deal with. My aim was to get through it without an error or a break and indeed I did, well I thought I did. Much to my dissapointment, I zeroed my inverted 3 turn roller (looking at the score sheets, I flew it outside instead of inside - that figure was 40K and proved to be a costly mistake), and a couple of my figures should have been flown better. So I again finished second to Russel and that gave me second overall for the weekend. Congratulations to Russell on a terrific win.
I was disappointed not to win but I was the new guy in Advanced, so all in all, I'm happy with the result.
This competition has highlighted the areas of my flying that need work, and work on them is exactly what I'll be doing in the coming weeks and months.
This was also the first comp with my family in attendance. It was a little strange having my wife, Angela, and our twin toddler girls out on the flight line but it was lovely to have them there. I also had Les and Pauline Day along for support - thanks guys. I made them all wear Allianz hats which they happily did!
A couple of times over the weekend my plane was referred to as the "Allianz Rebel 300", not bad considering the recency of our hook up with Allianz. Allianz continue to impress me with their professionalism and determination to establish themselves into the Aviation Insurance market. Give them a try, I'm sure you will find them helpful,
aviation@allianz.com.au or (03) 9224 3044 .
After flying finished on the Sunday, Paul Phelan of Australian Flying Magazine fame, asked me to do an aerial photos shoot with the Redbull Extra from Bankstown. Paul took photos from a Cessna (he looked very cold up there with the door open....) and these photos should accompany an upcoming story about Competition Aerobatics in Australian Flying Magazine. It will be great for our sport to get some more coverage. I think more people would be keen to try it if they knew more about it.
My thanks go to all involved with the NSW Champs for a smooth flowing and enjoyable weekend and a special thanks to those who have directly supported me over the past year. I feel I've learnt a lot but really we have only just begun...
The "Hoxton Park Airport Wake" was held this weekend. The local SAAA guys organised the event to mark the expected closing of the airport, planned for 15th December 2008. There was a very good turn out of visiting people and aircraft, highlighting just what a loss this airport would be. 
