Friday saw the last day of flying and the 2nd unknown got underway in the morning with David J flying 1st out of the team followed by John then me then Paul. This sequence was easier for us in terms of height loss, but was still a phenomenally difficult sequence to get through cleanly, with a 3 out 270 roller from inverted immediately following a devilishly complicated French figure - a 2x8 opp 3/4 push up half loop - 4x8 opp double roll. It was just too much for some. We watched with glee several people lose it completely on the roller. The smile was soon to be wiped off my face, however...!
David J flew a clean flight, but still a little too high for the judges liking. John again elected to fly the French sequence and despite a lovely flight, got hammered for an over rotation on a 4x8. My flight went okay until the last two figures. I had a moment with the roller where my brain told my right foot to hit the rudder and my hand to push the stick to the right. But my hand had other ideas and I started the wrong way. I instantly corrected, but by then had got a little behind in the turn and never really caught up. A bit of a no no on a 39k figure. Fortunately we had put that fig last so any error wouldn't carry through into the next figure.
Having got himself psyched up with a determination to banish the demons of the last couple of flights, Paul set off on what was to be perhaps the most bizarre competition flight experience of his illustrious career. He ran into the box, performed a warm up humpty, then rolled inverted to check the inverted systems. The aircraft's inverted oil system performed as it should, but Paul's inverted stomach system failed somewhere during the first or second push and the contents of his stomach were forced, at high pressure, all over the canopy. Unsure of the penalty for landing, Paul carried on with his flight. It was quite remarkable that he could fly at all under the circumstances, but his flight was clean, aggressive and largely error free. However, the distraction of vomit floating around the cockpit caused him to substitute a 2x4 for a half roll in figure 1.
A hard zero ensued, which caused his score to plummet. That evening we all enjoyed a well deserved beer and reflected on our flights. We came to the conclusion that it was our sequence construction and positioning that was letting us down more than our overall flying (though there is much room for improvement there too!). Although they are excellent pilots, we saw the French make several small errors that did not get reflected in their scores. But we realised that they could hide those errors from the judges by clever positioning. This was confirmed by the French coach, Coco, who gave us a few pointers which should help us in the future. John's status as French CAP 232 driver also encouraged Coco to give him several tips which he was able to pass on to us. But we will have to wait until next year. As a team we came 5th behind the French, Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Not a bad start for the fledgling team and we plan to apply all we have learned to our training over the next year.
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