PG OPEN ROUND 1 - MANILLA - FINAL

The After Party

It should be some small consolation to those at home that there was no task on the last day of the competition.

Upper level winds were forecast to be extremely strong, so although a task was set to fly to Bingara, the Comp Organiser declared that launch was not going to open.

No worries - pilots were pretty tired and it meant that the closing ceremony was brought forward.

The competition winner will be no surprise - Peter Slade, who won three of the six tasks. Highest scoring Kiwi was Reuben Muir, in tenth place overall.

A very successful competition overall, and massive kudos goes to organiser Mark Hardman, with support from:

Task Committee: Evan Lamberton, Craig Collings, Gareth Carter
Safety Committee: Brandon O'Donnell, JJ Bastion, Ivo Kalushkov
Launch Marshals: Janice Lamberton, Sandy Yong, Melanie Heather
Scoring: Johnny Hopper, with support from Cameron Kennedy (and of course loads of support from Geoff Wong)
Hospitality: Godfrey Wenness of Manilla Paragliding

It's been an awesome week for all of us, with more than half of the Kiwis smashing PBs, and knocking out big distances. Jeff Ripley, in the 8 flying days he was here, flew a total of 929.3km. Reuben, who made goal EVERY TASK, flew close to 1000km.

We had three pilots throw reserves, with one of them needing to deploy both his reserves (lucky he had two!). All pilots are uninjured, so it's all happy endings.

The only thing left to deal with is that Robbo needs new undies after a 12m/s climb the other day (that sadly pulled him over 10,000ft, the altitude limit for the competition). Can anybody help?

With six out of seven days flying, we had a 6000 point competition - unheard of for NZ!

Overall results: Kiwi Open Highcloud Results

Great flying, and now I can't wait for Round 2 in Nelson in a few weeks! Not signed up yet? There's still time - register here: http://www.pgopen.org.nz/