The weather was near perfect for our competition day on Sunday, something quite surprising as the day before and the day after were miserable.

The first task was an instrumentless circuit and while most were not too far away from the correct speeds, the heights were for the most part a long way out. The turns onto crosswind were anywhere up to 1000 ft and downwind was flown as high as 1400 ft. Most approaches and landings were quite acceptable. Glen Thompson was the only one to get speeds and heights spot on.

The second task was an engine failure on take off and the correct procedure here was a turn 30 degrees to the left to miss Raglan (the only choice), adopt the correct glide speed of 70 knots, switch on the electric fuel pump, check fuel tank selection and, if this does not fix the problem, apply flap as required, fly the aeroplane and land in the paddock to the east of the village. From the height at which the failure occurred, this could quite easily be achieved.

The second part of the mystery circuit was the stuck throttle on downwind. The only way this can be achieved is to position the aircraft on base at a point where a glide approach can be safely made and then bring the mixture back into idle cut out. This of course we did not carry out, but simulated the situation by using the throttle. There was quite a variety of approaches on the day, but all achieved the required result.

The instrument climb was reasonably well carried out and the forced landing, apart from only one clearing the engine on descent, was also ok.

The quiz relating to a Bathurst TAF could have been better handled. Peter Ticehurst was the only one to get 10 out of 10. The validity period for the Bathurst TAF (110214) in local time was from 12 noon on the 11th until midnight.

SCT 020 means cloud cover of 3 to 4 Octas at 2000 ft about the ground and BKN 030 means a cloud cover of 5 to 7 Octas at 3000 ft above ground level. Several did not mention that the cloud cover in a TAF is always above ground level and not above sea level as it is in an area forecast.

The answer to the question relating to the wind change at 6.30 pm was 240/10 knots. The wind change was forecast from 08 UTC or 6.00 pm local time.

A METAR is a meteorological aerodrome report, which is issued at a specific time and is updated hourly or half hourly. This only relates to the aerodrome. 03/01 is the current temperature and dew point.

Congratulations to Glen Thompson, who won the gold medal with 62 points from Peter Ticehurst, the silver with 60.5 points and Ed Collins the bronze on 60.0 points.

Jerry Trevor-Jones