BMFA Nationals 2011

It was pretty weird having to travel over 400 miles to my 'home' slope for the first time.  And also pretty weird taking two planes that I hadn't flown in months.  No worries, I studiously arrived a day early to get some much needed practice, which rather predictably ended up as watching the rain.
Fortunately though all that practice came in really handy on day one, which was spent entirely, exclusively and uninterruptedly... watching the rain; and no one was better at it than me!
We met at the Wrecker car park on day two where we were sat on top of the low cloud, something I've not seen in the twenty odd years I've been watching low cloud at the Bwlch. Have a look at the photos.
The day's flying was typical back of the Wrecker; bloody horrible. Very thermic, bumpy and very difficult to get any sort of rhythm.
Lots of people flew really well, various people had bits of good air, some people showed they need a bit or practice (me!) and finally the results panned out as shown below.
Condolences to those who flew well but got nothing for their efforts.
Personally I think we need to look again at the World Champs qualifying process.  Like never before the skills required to be competitive will be very slope specific and that slope will be nothing like the back of the Wrecker in thermic conditions.  Also the concept of running a qualifier that includes people who have no interest in attending is just weird!
Some photos and the results are below.

1	Simon Thornton	6541.57
2	Mark Redsell	6502.31
3	Kevin Newton	6479.83
4	Martin Newnham	6334.7
5	Peter Gunning	6292.7
6	Joel West	6284.91
7	Adam Richardson	6223.19
8	Mike Evans	6164.88
9	Greg Dakin	6152.25
10	Keith Woods	6111.02
11	Clayton Landells	6017.09
12	Frank Hulton	5939.95
13	Andrzej Tabero	5873.03
14	Rich Bago	5809.14
15	Mick Walsh	5802.42
16	Paul Middleton	5770.05
17	Scott Ravenscroft	5744.77
18	Mark Abbotts	5720.39
19	Dave Rumble	5717.33
20	Jon Edison	5491.28
21	Ian Mason	5386.61
22	Paul Upton	5383.18
23	Tom Foreman	5319.04
24	Paul Stubly	5264.55
25	Tony Robertson	5198.63
26	Peter Burgess	5176.49
27	Jason Bioletti	4964.13
28	Mark Treble	4800.78
29	John Treble	4782.38