Narrative

BCC 2024 Round Four (Bravo) – Saturday 17 August 2024 – Long Mynd

Dear BCCers,

With my thanks for your patience, as we had a few pilots to help out with minor tracklog issues, I am pleased to confirm that we now also have the scores from last weekend’s round at Long Mynd. My thanks to all involved for the timely uploading of flights to the XC League (it seems that the good habit of doing so while on retrieve is catching on nicely – our current apps make this very doable, which is very welcome).

As per the Bell Hill round, before I get to the scores, I would like to once again express my sincere thanks go to @DaveMcLeod, @Jamesthevet , @RoyDade and @aviateparagliding of the Long Mynd Soaring Club (LMSC) for facilitating another excellent round at one of the UK’s most iconic sites. We wouldn’t say no to another one of those before the season is complete!

If any of the pilots who enjoyed their grand day out in Shropshire (and beyond for quite a few) would be willing to provide a write up on the day’s flying, that would be very well received please. As per Bell Hill, the stats from the Long Mynd round highlight that despite the slow start to the day and often heavy cloud cover, there was excellent potential in the airmass. Of the 48 pilots in the round, 39 of those were able to post scores, with nine of those scoring flights also earning Personal Development prizes; two these were First Ever XCs (marvellous!), one was a First UK XC, two were UK PBs and four were Overall PBs.

Please do head over to the BCC website’s round results page to see the full list of scores and PD prize winners. As is customary though, we must offer our wholehearted to our First Ever XC pilots, Harry Wigglesworth of Thames Valley and Jordan Whittaker of the LMSC, a sweet moment indeed on home turf.

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.

Without further ado, the scores from the Long Mynd round are as follows. With the SW’ly airflow, airspace concerns become less of a consideration, opening up tracks into the Peak District and beyond. Although no one got to the ‘beyond’, @SpoonerNZ (97.5km) of SE Wales Blue, top scored making it to just shy of Ashbourne on the edge of the White Peak. However, it was SE Wales Red, with a true team effort, who secured the 1,000 points, ahead of their sister team who earned 800 points, with Derbyshire Soaring Club’s two pilots scoring an impressive 738 points, thanks to flights that saw both of them well on their way back home!

So, with another win to their name, SE Wales Red with 3,277 points, now command a healthy lead at the top of the league table, opening up a gap of almost 700 points to Condors Red. UK Armed Forces (South), are a further 250 points behind them in third spot, with Skysurfers (Low Expectations) and Wessex (One) hot on their heels. It’s still only mid-August, this time last year we had only completed one round; this year we’ve completed five. With any luck we’ll get another three round or so under our collective belts before the curtain comes down at the end of October, which could make the scoring really interesting to say the least!

The SportsTrackLive scene for the round can be found here:

SportsTrackLive | Paragliding - BCC 2024 Round Four Bravo – Sat 17 Aug 24 – Long Mynd | Matthew Tandy (created on 21/08/2024)