Kermie,
The objective, to quote from the blurb, is "to encourage the most interesting employment of a flying machine within the limits of competent airmanship and to demonstrate the capabilities of pilot and machine in a day's flying, during the hours between dawn and dusk, in terms of furthering some original and praiseworthy objective". It has to be done between certain dates, you pick your own theme, and there is a complicated scoring system awarding marks for originality, research, airmanship, planned/achieved ratio of distance and airborne time, presentation of log, etc etc etc etc. There are various trophies apart from the actual winners - one each for helicopters, microlights, and balloons, a novices trophy, a ladies trophy, and a long distance medal.
The flying is a bit of a marathon, but do-able. In this country finding a whole day of flyable weather means a lot of people enter but never manage to finish; it's a minimum of eight hours flying, though judges'discretion comes into this; last year we gave up after seven hours due to the early arrival of a warm front, but our entry still qualified - and won a trophy. By far the hardest part is thinking of a new and original theme. And the most time consuming thing is writing up the log and report.
All in all the whole thing takes a lot of planning, work, time, and money. Both times we've vowed afterwards that we won't do it again. But it's very addictive - especially if you win.
