CD Ashley Hoyland. Judges: Bob Ailles, Alan Simmonds, Peter Brett. Scorers: Alison, Marion. The same advance party who helped at the first and second Centralised agreed to officiate at this comp. Bob Rowland, Matt and I from the North drove down in perfect weather until some ½ mile from Barkston where it was raining, Mel drove through rain the whole of the way from home. Undaunted and with complete confidence (a good decision although it was probably made due to us all still being asleep) that Barkston would come good for us, we started to get pretty wet setting up the flight line. By 8:00am the rain started to clear. The runway was starting to dry by the time we made our way back to the main gate for the scheduled pilots briefing at 8.40am. Although the subject was covered at the pilots briefing and time was allowed for anyone not fully understanding the rules to ask questions some confusion arose later. I can only urge the Association again (and again and again) to provide a full rule book for everyone to read before the start of each season. Our hosts the Grantham and District Model Aircraft Club asked us to move our flightline some 50 metres to the right so that club members could fly off the runway intersection to our left, which presented no problems for either group. It was good to see some members turning out to their first competition of the season although it was sad that two had pulled out due to loss of models over the previous couple of days and one through illness. I hope all three are recovering well. Mike Williams flew first at 9:36 after the organising team had processed all the models for pilots who wished to enter the FAI Centralised Competition. All competitors would be competing for league points but those meeting the full rules of a Centralised Competition would be extracted to provide normalised scores for a UK Team league place. Bob and Mel weighed, measured, checked battery voltage and noise checked all models through the day and we should recognise the effort they made at the three Barkston Centralised to help make a relaxing day for the pilots. Other members who attended to scribe John and Darren Mee and none member Julian Boden made it possible for pilots to only scribe 1 or 2 flights per round rather than 3 planned. I also noticed that several pilots did more then their share of scribing, thank you to those. If I had only insisted on that 30 minute break for our judges at lunch time. Our judges were doing an excellent job and I thank them for their willingness to stick to our timed program, it makes the CDs job so much easier and makes for so much more professional event, I also believe pilots prefer to get on with their flying, so why should I have insisted we push on earlier in the day? Well a lesson to be learnt for all CDs, whilst ever the weather is good do not waste time, the day can change and spoil itself. So as Richard Christopher flew through his last few manoeuvres on the last flight of the day rain spotted the runway and dark clouds circled above. Unfortunately it did not wait for Richard and Andy Waterhouse to get their models away before the heavens opened in a big way and I don’t think anyone avoided getting at least a little wet and some more than others. I hope everything dried out for Richard and Andy and the rest of us should be thankful as we had a drier time. So our team competing in the World Championships in Portugal in 2009 was decided: John Harrop, Richard Christopher and Kevin Caton with Matt Hoyland as first reserve, but before that happens we have our team, John Harrop, Richard Christopher and Stephen Simm, chosen last year, competing in the European Championships in Italy at the end of August. Good luck to you all. By the time you read this we will know the results. Ashley Hoyland