Day 1

Gorringe teases us with his belly button again

Our resident weather guru, Dane, stuck his head out of his tent first thing this morning and declared the day would be no good as it was 4 degrees too cold. We laughed

At the briefing, the met lady took us through lots of slides and demonstrated that the trigger temperature would be 40 degrees and we'd only get to 36, so it would be 4 degrees too cold. We laughed.

The launch was delayed half an hour and initially they only threw the club class into the air, but once they stayed up we all launched.  10,300' on Terminillo,and  some 7 kt climbs to the airspace limit of FL115 later we'd done c400kms at speeds of 128 to 145kph on a 3 hour AAT. We laughed.

Hopefully Dane will forecast another naff day for day 2.

The Empire team had a good start - Coutts won the standards, Leigh won the 15's and Afandi came 4th in the 18's. Owen did bloody well with 4th in the standards too.

As for me - only in Rieti can you do 420kms at 128kph and feel pissed off that you were too slow knowing where you could have found 15 minutes of wasted time! I did however display committent by not leaving a good climb when a lightning bolt hit the ridge 500-1000m away from me. I did however turn the radio off as a concession.