UK Nationals 2008

UK National Paramotor Championships Group Photo

Wow wow and wow, this must be the best event I have ever been to. I don’t really know how to put the 3 days of tasks into words.

The organisation of the event the people it was just fantastic, eveyone was there for one reason to support paramotoring and for the love of the sport.

Traveled up Friday morning set off at 7.30am and arrived a little after 2pm, set up with the awning and went for a wonder, Gabe, PK, and Mark arrived later in the afternoon after taking one of Marks short cuts……glad I went my own way now. Friday night saw the first pilots and Marshal’s briefing, I was quite excited being so close to the action, pilots from around the world supporting there country were in there small groups talking over the tasks ahead.

Saturday morning saw the first of the early starts, up at 6am and ready for the Marshals meeting. I was on take offs, controling the pilots taking off with red and green flags, 41 pilots on the flight deck all in different stages of getting ready. The first task was a nav task with a spot landing at the end of the task. All pilots in the air safely and time for a brew and an hour or two to spare, as the pilots started to return I was on spot landing duty, and my task was to keep the centre spot which was about 9″ in diameter covered with flour to give that dusty effect upon landing…..(oh did I say, I landing 1 foot short of the centre spot when i landed after my free flight and even got flour on my gloves…..framed I think so).

These was various other tasks during the next few days, and my duties varied from controling the take offs from the flight deck to recording the scores for the spot landings.

Gabe attached a wing to his wheelchair, and PK pushed the chair to get the wing up and flying….and they did do it, it was so funny. Eveyone was in high spirts and we were all ther for one reason to support the game we play even if sometimes it can be a rough one.

I had a short and bumpy flight, perfect forward launch straight down the runway, insight of all the spectators and anyone else mulling around, felt great up again.

All in all a great time had by all, the drive was more than worth it. I hope Norman or Mike Brown do sort out smaller events during the year with similar tasks just to give that confidence a nice little boost.

This entry was posted on 06/06/2008 at 12:19 am and is filed under Paul Flight Log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.