Narrative

BCC 2024 Round Four (Alpha) – Saturday 17 August 2024 – Bell Hill

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Well, less than 24 hours from the last landing time, I am very pleased to announce that the tracklogs have already been collated from yesterday’s round at Bell Hill. It is a little bit easier when there are fewer pilots requiring flights to be processed, but still, that’s a first-class effort and I extend my gratitude to the team captains and pilots for getting their post flight admin sorted so swiftly.

And before I get to the scores, my sincere thanks go to Brian Watson and the Wessex Club for setting the round up and Sean Staines (Wessex Chair), assisted by Neil Russell (Head Coach), for delivering the round on the day. A very neat round from start to finish; here’s to more of those please before the season is out.

As per earlier rounds, I am looking for a full write up from someone who was there please, so I won’t attempt to do a poor version of that here, other than reflecting on a classic Bell Hill Day, which offered something for everyone. The stats certainly show a good return on the opportunity created by Wessex with 21 of the 29 pilots posting scores and a third of those earning Personal Development Prizes; two of which were First Ever XCs (I always love to see those of course), two were First UK XCs and three were UK PBs.

Please have a peek at the round results page to see the full list of scores and PD prizes. Up front though our collective congratulations go to Joel Anderson of the North Devon and Felipe Sfreddo of the Wessex Club for going over the back for the first time; a great result.

Note. If any pilot has inadvertently not claimed a PD prize, or claimed the wrong PD prize (that does happen), please let me know and I can make amendments as required.

And so now the scores from Bell Hill. With Swanage the realistic limit of exploitation (there is an exception to that – more to follow), the Devon and Somerset Condors (Red) took the 1,000 points by getting three pilots into ‘goal’ with the others not that far behind. A similar team result for the Skysurfers (Low Expectations) and UK Armed Forces (South) saw them chalk up 954 and 920 points respectively. For the Skysurfers, they can thank Andrew Ruff and Ian Pruden for their UK PBs in helping them to their solid second place finish, while a super flight from Max Davidson, his First UK XC and top scorer for the day, well supported by Team Ireland assisted UKAF in securing that third spot.

The exception that I mentioned above…well James Lloyd from North Devon (Red) flew a brilliant triangle, which in the XC League earns him 85.1 points. However, given the development nature of the BCC, we don’t use multiplier score flights, so James scored against the 37.9km turnpoint distance that created his triangle. Still a very satisfying flight for James who was then able to support his team mates as he landed back at the hill!

We will of course need to wait for the scores to come in from the parallel round at the Long Mynd, which league leaders SE Wales Red were taking part in; however, for now, Condors Red sit proudly atop the table on the back of their excellent team performance, with UK Armed Forces (South), and Skysurfers (Low Expectations) along with Wessex One with over 2,000 points to their credit.

The SportsTrackLive scene for the round can be found here:

SportsTrackLive | Paragliding - BCC 2024 Round Four Alpha – Sat 17 Aug 24 – Bell Hill | Matthew Tandy (created on 18/08/2024)