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Parajet triumphs at Boston

Posted on April 22, 2013 in Phil Jennings   

I have just returned from an excellent but tiring weekend in Boston Lincolnshire where the British paramotor league was held. This is the first event of the season and a great warm up for the various Open competitions coming later this year.

We had an early start Saturday with first flights at 6am! The first few tasks were pylon slaloms which i was looking forward too but due to poor preparation on my part I turned the wrong way on 2 of the runs. So despite being second fastest I was deducted points…not a good start.

We then had a pure navigation task that involved covering the greatest distance between turn points in a hour and 40 minutes. I made it back to the finish gate with only 2 minutes to spare and did 90.5 km giving me a nice second place.

The next task was an eco-distance, which had several parts to it. We had to weigh our kit before leaving and then fly a marked 8 km radius circle as fast as possible, then proceed to try and cover as many of the 1 km squares on the map as economically as possible. We were also limited to 6 litres of fuel that we had to try and judge at the same time. I planned a cross wind weaving route around the map trying to hoover up as many squares as possible. This worked well as I ended up covering 91 but I went over my fuel allowance buy 0.01 Litres which cost me 20 %. Thankfully my route had got me so far ahead of the nearest competitor that even with the deduction I still came second.

As the wind picked up in the afternoon we did some fun simple tasks. The first fairly straightforward, kick a stick, land lower the wing to the ground, relaunch and kick a second stick. Its very simple but equally something you don’t really practice. The second was similar, kick a stick, land, walk/run with you wing overhead through a small slalom course, take off and kick a stick. I had a 3rd on the first and a poor 9th on the second after using too slow a trim setting.

Sunday morning brought more good weather so after a 6.30 briefing we were off on ‘breadcrumbs’ task. We had to fly from a centre point along a 8 km track of our choosing as fast as possible and back to the centre point, then again on a different track. Before flying we had to declare our speeds and try and do it at those speeds. We also had to fly the return leg of each track as close as possible to the outgoing one. A little challenging and after tuning 1 meter too soon on one of the legs I was deducted points. Another silly mistake which costs me lots of points!

We finished up the competition with a classic pure economy task, so launch and fly for a minimum of 1 hour and use a least fuel as possible. This was a rough one as it was spring thermal weather so pretty rough. Not a personal favourite of mine and I managed a mediocre 5th.

So results were new Parajet team pilot Ric Wormersley joint first with 9 times British champion Michel Carnet, Parajet pilot Dean Eldridge second, Parajet dealer Mark Morgan 3rd and myself in 4th.

A great end to a brilliant weekend!

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