Thanks John. I agree with Whirly - this is very helpful feedback.

One comment which I made to David was that it would be nice to see a breakdown of the scores. It's all very well knowing which teams beat us, and looking through their logs, but even then I don't know which particular aspects they did particularly well on, and on which aspects we may have beaten them. This is particularly true when it comes to subjective areas, such as originality - Whirly's entry seemed, to me, to be especially original, and I'd guess that this was one area where her and Tricia scored particularly highly. But this is such a subjective area that I don't know whether the judges would agree. Still, having pointers like these from John can only help with next year's entry. (Oh dear, I think I may have just admited that I may be considering entering next year...)

FFF
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FFF,

Be warned; the Dawn to Dusk is highly addictive! :eek:

FFF - is the Europa fixed now?

Kolibear,

The Europa was fixed within a couple of months. Unfortunately, two weeks after it flew again - and before I'd had a chance to fly it - it was grounded due to a completely unrelated issue. This unrelated issue was finally resolved last week, and it is flying again now... but I am so out of currency that I don't feel ready to fly it just yet. Weather-permitting, I'll be flying with an instructor next week to get current again.

FFF
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I personally would not like to see the points awarded published as I don’t think you would find out what you want to know from such a table. This is because after each judge has done their individual marking we then have a meeting at which our marks are only the start of the decision making process. At this stage the marks highlight where we differ. This then leads to a debate and a lot of ‘Yes – I take your point, I had not noticed that’ and so on.

When I started we used to produce a points allocation (the simple average of the individual judges) and put those to the Chief Judge. These days he is briefed with written reasons for a recommended order of merit which properly reflects our eventual consensus on the order.

Having been involved with both methods I feel today's approach is fairer to all competitors.

Now I just need a good idea... :)

Unfortunately, the good idea is the 'easy' bit. :(

For anyone who would really like to do this, but a) can't find a partner or b) doesn't relish 8-9 hours of flying, do consider the BWPA's Chairwoman's Challenge. I took part last year with a student PPL from my flying group and we came ... joint third out of 10 (does anyone see a pattern developing?). It's slightly different in that a theme is given, but it's up to the pilot/s to interpret that theme. It really is a good introduction to the D2D.

I'm hoping to do both next year. :ok:

I disagree, Aerbabe. I think the "good idea" is the hardest bit. But the rest of it is pretty difficult too. :eek:

There's also a Dawn to Dusk Half Competition - about four hours flying, either morning or afternoon, on a theme, otherwise similar to the full competition. This might be a more gentle way to break yourself in. Or for people like me, burnt out after three Dawn to Dusks, a saner way to do it. That's what I'll be doing next year. It might even give me time to enjoy it. :ok:

This took a bit of finding...
 

You can guess why I spent ages hunting this down...

Dawn to Dusk

Oh dear - I seem to have got the bug :\