by John Millott, Competition Director

Our Xmas competition is over for another year. This event provided the usual relaxed racing plus the chance for pilots from GCV and other Clubs to practice for State and National competitions which followed this season.

Key points from the competition are as follows.

Pilots

Eleven pilots flew in this year's event. In addition to GCV pilots, we welcomed a visitor from the Geelong Gliding Club: Michael Durrant who flew an LS8. In addition, Gary Stevenson from the Grampians Soaring Club flew with us on some days but did not enter the competition.

Flying Activity

Dates this year allowed the competition to be conveniently extended by one day to allow flying from Saturday 27 December 2008 to Friday 2 January 2009.

Competition tasks were set on five out of the seven potential days – one was lost due to poor weather and New Year's day was declared a lay-day to allow extended New Years Eve celebrations. This proved to be a poor decision. Soaring conditions on New Years Day were excellent despite a marginal forecast, and a great day's soaring was lost – just shows we should not put too much faith in extended weather predictions.

The competition was incident free, and all pilots are to be congratulated on their safety minded approach to flying.

Results

Overall results are a s follows.

Placing	Registration	Pilot	Glider	Total Score
1	FQF	Durrant Michael	LS 8/18m	3432
2	11	Max Kirschner Bob Fox	Ventus 2cT/18m	3163
3	HNZ	Gray Peter	Discus	2743
4	WUS	McKinlay Laurie	LS 3	2580
5	S9	Woods Nick	ASG 29/18m	2288
6	FQG	Cowan Bruce	Ventus 1	2267
7	GOS	Martin Peter	Jantar 2b	1909
8	RG	Smith Stu	Ventus 17.6m	732
9	LA	Mike Cater	Discus	650
10	LLU	O'Grady Louise	ASW 19	497
11	BM	Robinson Richard	Std. Libelle	187

Michael Durrant from the team of Max Kirschner and Bob Fox, with Peter Gray coming in third. Congratulations and well done to all prize winners.

Thanks

Thanks are again due to Max and Sue Kirschner. Max set tasks and scored while Sue managed competition entries, collected entry fees and managed retrieves.

Thanks are also extended to all competing pilots who made this years event safe and enjoyable.

The competition will be held again next year between 27 December 2009 and 1 January 2010. A similar format will be adopted and tasks will be set to accommodate less experienced cross-county and competition pilots. All are encouraged to participate.