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]