The final scores

The scores are available on the emc2015 website:

WL1 (single seat weight shift)

1. 118 - Henryk ORWAT (POL)

2. 111 - Blazej PIECH (POL)

3. 142 - Roman WAWRZYNIAK (POL)

WL2 (dual seat weight shift)

1. 225 - Przemyslaw & Dominika JURKIEWICZ (POL)

2. 216 - Ferinc VINCE & Gabriella SZABO (HUN)

3. 212 - Jiri ZITKA & Jan HANUS (CZE)

AL2 (dual seat fixed wing)

1. 477 - Krisztian DOLHAI & Lajos SZONYEGI (HUN)

2. 423 - Ivo LENGAL & Martin GERSL (CZE)

3. 444 - Jiri KRAJCA and Ilona RAZOVA (CZE)

GL2 (dual seat flexwing)

1. 610 - Marcos & Celia CHULIA (ESP)

2. 601 - Alojzy DERNBACH & Sylwia KEDZIERSKA (POL)

3. 602 - Davide DEME & Tiziano COLLIARD (ITA)

Team prize

1. POL

2. CZE

3. RUS

Congratulations all round! A great closing ceremony to end a good championship. There were smiles aplenty as people talked of their experiences and adventures of the last 2 weeks. New friends, new memories and hopes for the future. See you next year in England for the FAI World Microlight Championships 2016...

Dealing with a protest

Protests are made public once they have been decided so there is no breaking of confidence here.

One team has protested to the Jury; it's the last action of the Jury before declaring the results as official. It concerns the positioning of a GPS point in the scoring system.

Competitors were told to fly to a place on the official map - in this case it is a road junction. Before the start of the task, someone in the organising team must have visited the road junction and taken a GPS fix - they can't use a mapping programme and especially not Google Earth or Google Maps which may not correspond with the official map at all. Competitors see the road junction, they fly over it and the scorer makes sure that the road junction is accurately logged by GPS.

In this case the competitor was scored as missing the road junction. He wasn't happy so he drove to the junction and took his own GPS fix. It was about 20m different from the official one. Mind you, those 20m were vital; using his fix he scored more points.

The rules state that the scorer has a small margin of error and the scorer's fix was within that margin - if, of course, the scorer made an error at all. Maybe the competitor did!

Anyway, the jury have to look at the facts, talk to everyone involved, read the rules and then decide, according to everything they have considered, what to do.

In this case, the scorer's fix was acceptable and the competitor lost the protest. He still wins gold in his class...

Saturday morning

Good morning! It's another beautiful day here - light winds, a thin layer of cloud in an otherwise blue sky. The airfield operations have re-started after a break for the championships so parachuting is going on.

Meanwhile, the last complaints are being answered and the jury is standing by for any further protests - there is a rumour of at least one inbound.

The jury are also members of the CIMA Bureau (the elected board of the commission) so they are busy writing a report and looking at what improvements could be made, what lessons could be taken from this event. Running a championship is a big task and the competition director and chief marshal both look a great deal older and more tired than last Saturday morning. Generally, though, they have done a very good job and should be proud. Maybe the team with the imminent protest will disagree, we will see...

Not so sexi...

The Polish Pipistrel of Krzysztof and Agnieszka JURKIEWICZ landed about 15 minutes before the end of the task window so all eyes were searching for the Virus of Hungarians Kristian DOLHAI and Lajos SZONYEGI. Then... with two minutes to go...

Engine on, a perfect deck landing and stopping in plenty of time. Probably 4 minutes short of the maximum 6 hours.

They started their descent and still had 4 litres left! Earlier in the flight they tried to re-start the engine and it was reluctant - cold, no choke and a small battery meant they sweated a bit before it sprang into life so they chose to descend engine on, eventually landing with 2 litres of fuel.

Krisztian thinks they flew for well over 4 hours engine off. His summary of the flight? He got out of the plane, posed for the photo and then ran off, saying "I need a pee".

That's it. Flying over. A party tonight and then the scores will be made official some time in the morning before the medal ceremony at 1700 tomorrow. See you then!

The scoresheet

Here's the scoresheet as it stands - remember; they are provisional at this stage!

The scores on the doors

We are still waiting for the final two Pipistrel aircraft to return; one has been spotted at high altitude near the airfield, the other is out of sight for the time being. 30 minutes to go.

Time to turn to the score. You can see them on the EMC2015 blogspot, though sometimes it's not been easy to follow. Here's how they stand at the moment, subject to the final task (still being flown) and any complaints arising from just a couple of others.

WL1 (single seat flexwing)
It's pretty tight at the top. Henryk ORWAT (POL) is on 4415 points with Blazej PIECH (POL) second on 4135 and then Roman WAWRZNIAK (POL) quite a way back on 2170.

WL2 (dual seat flexwing)
Poland look to have sewn up gold with Dominika and Prezmyslaw JURKIEWICZ on 6040, over 1000 ahead of second place Ferinc VINCE and Gabriella SZABO (HUN) on 4908. Third currently are the Czech crew of Jiri ZITKA and Jan HANUS on 4482.

AL2 (dual seat fixed wing)
Yeow - it's tight! Three Czech crews fighting for the medals; Ivo LENGAL and Martin GERSL leading on 3980, Juraj CEKAN and Lukas DOLINSKY on 3758 and Jiri KRAJCA and Ilona RAZOVA on 3669. All this despite all three crews scoring zero on the economy triangle task earlier in the week - a hot topic and one that was subject to a protest for the jury to deal with.

GL2 (dual seat autogyro)
Have the Spanish crew of Marcos and daughter Celia CHULIA done enough? On 4282 they are 130 ahead and put in a good performance today. Second are Alojzy DERNBACH and Sylvia KEDZIERSKA (POL) on 4152 and third are Davide DEME and Tiziano COLLIARD (ITA) on 2082.

Remember - these are just provisional! It can all change in the last few hours. Fortunately the closing ceremony is at 1700 tomorrow, giving enough time to sort out any late problems.

(Pipistrels still in the air at 1815...)

Gyro power!

1 hour 30 mins - with enough fuel to fly for 40 minutes.

503 power!

4 hours 15 minutes in the end - with a Rotax 503!

Two to go

The Aeroprakt has just landed. Might be as much as 4h40!

Two left - guess which?

The Germans have landed.

3 hours 25 minutes for the BMW powered Eagle.

Three trikes in

Three trikes just landed in quick succession. I make that 3 hours 30 mins. Not bad!

Update 1600

3.5 hours later. Still a couple of trikes in the air, some of the 'Junior' 3 axis planes and, of course, the two Pipistrel aircraft.

The Norwegian lollipop man just landed deadstick; about 3 hours in an Ikarus C42 is very respectable.

Up and flying... carefully.

That's it. 15 minutes later and 36 are in the air, just two more getting ready. The flying area is a cylinder of radius 17km and up to 7000ft so spotting aeroplanes is not easy. We saw 5 in the same thermal, high up and looking good from where we were.

Writing this an hour after the start of the task and many are back already, especially the autogyros which aren't very suited to this task. No sign of the 'sexi' one, yet...

All about the stamina

It might be 'Sexi' but how long will it, ahem, stay up?

Seriously, this is the Pipistrel Virus. The pilot tells me he can fly for 2.5 hours without switching the engine off. The total task time is 6 hours and he expects to land a couple of minutes before the end.

Last minute preparations

The Norwegians take on some food calories ready for their flight. A last lollipop (see the stick in his hand...)

Pictures of fuelling and waiting

Some photos from the fuelling procedure before we started.

Economy in waiting...

We're ready. Wind of 10kt, gusting a bit more. Hot sun. Dust. 38 aircraft standing by.

Friday morning - economy

Good morning! It's a beautiful day here in central Poland with the sun shining and the flags sitting quietly by their poles.

There is a briefing at 0800 for today's task of economy - pure duration. Crews were asked to prepare fixed amounts of fuel last night (8kg for single seat, 10kg for dual) and the process of fuelling will take place from approximately 0830 to 1130 before the take-off window of 1230-1330.

The aim of the task is simple - to fly for as long as possible! Crews must land on the deck when finishing but they may run to zero fuel if they are brave.

This is probably the last task. A party of some kind is planned for this evening but we have no details yet. And the flags have just woken up, though they are swaying quietly for now...

Blue skies

The weather is really good today. The sock is not really representative and the picture was taken just as a thermal blew through. It's blowing about 10kt with blue skies and hot sun.

How to have an engine failure

The Magni Gyro of Marcos & Celia CHULIA (ESP) suffered loss of power just after take off - caused by a fuel connector not being fully pushed together and shaking loose on take-off. Marcos didn't waste any time in doing absolutely the right thing - putting the aircraft down on the ground again, straight ahead of him.

The result? Well, nothing! The rules allow competitors to return to the airfield within 5 minutes without penalty, just to cater for such an event. Here, Competition Director Anna is working out their new take-off times and informing the marshalling team how to deal with the situation. Marcos was soon in the air again and on course to bag some points.

[edited - thanks for the feedback]

Scoring

A busy day (as usual) for the scorers. Here is Italian Ettore ANGELETTI handing in his map with the locations of where he thinks he's matched the photos to features on the ground.

Yuriy - OUT!

Breaking news - hot favourite to win the AL2 (dual fixed wing) class is OUT!

While in quarantine and planning his flight, Yuriy YAKOVLIEV could only watch helplessly as a strong gust got underneath his canopy and blew it over on its hinges, resulting in it breaking into small pieces. The aeroplane also rocked slightly and the wing tip just touched the ground.

That's enough for Yuriy; no canopy means he cannot compete, at least not to the standard he expects. He's packing up and heading off home. This really opens up the field.

Marshal Mary

Team GB (Laurie and Mary) have offered their services as marshals and are busy directing returning competitors to the scoring office and quarantine areas. Here is Mary with Jury member Tormod VEIBY.

Easy-ski!

Russians Yuril BUSHUEV and Ludmila NAZAROVA make easy work of getting out of the 100m deck.

A little extra braking

Remember the aeroplane that uses its nose as an extra brake? Yes, this one!

Thursday's flying

The WL (flexwing) classes set off from around 0945 this morning. They were given a map one hour before take-off and had to do their planning and speed declarations before setting off. It's now 1430 and the last of the AL (fixed wing) classes have just left.  It's alright for those who left early; several have been spotted in the airfield cafe sitting in front of pizza and beer...

One of the Norwegian team (Jan NESSA and Arild VEGRIM) putting the finishing touches to their photo boards.

Briefing out on the field

Competition Director giving an on-the-spot briefing to crews to remind them 'safety first' following a heavy spot landing which resulted in a broken nosebag leg. (autocorrect failure!)

As always, click to enlarge.

Too busy!

Whoa! Too much going on! Up at 0330 and in bed at 2300 with barely time to stop in between. Apologies for the lack of updates; stuck in an office!

Yesterday afternoon the conditions for flying were OK so the flexwings flew the economy task with no reported dramas. That came later in the team briefing when one team expressed their dissatisfaction with the task setting and another team referred to a protest they had made (and lost), claiming those around them were 'killing' the sport. You can imagine the atmosphere. 

Fortunately the frustrations on show dissipated and today's (Thursday) tasks was briefed. Two navigation tasks back to back along known and unknown tracks, a test of navigational ability coupled with flying to a declared speed. Then a precision landing to finish. The wind is being kind; probably 10kt and well within the limits of the people flying this week. At last - all crews out and in the air, scoring some points!

The photos are of the building I am stuck in. I must try harder to get out more!

More drama

It seems neither the competitors nor the organisers are having much luck. With great weather conditions this morning the flexwing classes set off on a navigation task, the marshals and helpers doing a fine job of handing out task sheets, collecting groundspeed declarations and then seeing the crews off one by one.

Then, a bit of unwanted drama. The German crew of Alfons Feldmeier and Stephan Wanner took off well inside the 100m deck and started their climb out until their engine coughed and lost power. The pilot elected to turn back but then the engine coughed again and the trike descended rapidly before hitting the ground. We watched from the quarantine area as people rushed across the airfield to the scene and called for medical help but soon the word came back that they were OK, though battered and injured. They won't fly again this week. 

Flying was suspended with the fixed wing and autogyro classes ready to go and waiting in quarantine.  Then the wind has got up while the local authorities have been conducting their investigations so we have seen no further action. 

The good news is that the flexwing classes will return valid scores from the morning's task but we need more flying in the other classes. We have two further days of flying after today and we need to put more completed tasks on the official scoreboard. 

A briefing is planned for later today and we may well fly an economy task; fuel has been weighed, fuel tanks sealed and pilots are resting in the hope of springing into action later.

Time to fly 2

No wind! Tra la laaaaaa! There is absolutely no wind at all! We should get up at 0330 every day!

News from Camp GBR

Bad news from Team GB. Their trike suffered undercarriage damage during the spot landing task yesterday evening and it has been declared enough to put a stop to their championship. Team GB are out of the running. 

Pilot Laurie blames himself for the heavy landing though the tricky conditions would not have helped. Both Laurie and Mary are fine; they were well looked after and the worst injury was a very slight scrape to Laurie's elbow.

Time to fly

At last! Great flying conditions... except it's dark.

The navigation task is GO. We had a briefing at 0430, maps will be given out from 0500 and first take-off at 0600. The wind is forecast to be good enough for all classes. Hooray! We're flying!

Who's who

Thanks for the feedback so far. One says he can't follow the action because the competitor list doesn't have the competition numbers next to names and the score sheets only list the competition numbers!

You can find a list of who's who on the emc2015.pl (pdf) website while I ask the webmaster to upload it to the emc2015.blogspot.pl site.

Over the line

Making it look easy!

Precision take-offs

We're off! Wind of 10kt but gusting a fair bit more. We're running the autogyros first, then the fixed wing - in the hope that the forecast comes good and the wind calms a little later for the flex wings.

Pilots have to decide where in the deck they start so that they can clear a tape 1m high at the end of the deck. So far most are opting for around 60-70m and, with the help of the wind directly down the deck, few have broken the tape.

Photos of non-flying aircraft...

The wind persists. We have a briefing at 1500 for possible take-off and landing tasks later today. Meanwhile, a few photos...