From the 24th to the 29th June 2024 the University of Leicester Flying Team competed in the interuni's competition at Saltby airfield, home of Loughbrough Uni Gliding. Having aerotowed the gliding centres K-13 over to the competition airfield the sunday before the team were ready to compete. Havign been founded only that academic year, this was a great opportunity for the UoL club to test themselves against other Uni's with decades of experience and established student pilot pathways.
The competition is split into 3 cups. The progression cup allows pre-solo pilots to compete, by gaining 50 points for every part of the pilots syllabus they master. The soaring cup is for early post-solo students with the goal of staying up for an hour. One point is awarded for every minute the glider is up, and one point for every 100ft of height gained by the pilot. However, for every minute after the hour, four points are deducted. The cross country cup consists of self-set cross country tasks, scored against the BGA ladder. The overall competition is won by the total of points from each cup per each uni, with individual pilots efforts being recognised on a daily basis. The winning team of the progression cup hosts the competition two years after their victory.
On day one the team put up a strong almost 1000 point effort into the progression cup taking first place for day one. The efforts of Rapha, Ollie and Charlie took second place in the soaring cup. Day two saw Kate help Saltby beat their record of 70 glider launches in one day, and Kate also won the progression cup that day, with Abdul coming second, amassing an 1100 point lead overall. Ollie came second in the soaring cup day two with a 59 point effort, with Charlie also contributing his efforts to put UoL in third place for soaring. On day three Kirsten managed a huge 650 point progression cup effort, placing UoL at a 2000 point lead with others contributions.
On day four, the weather turned with strong winds and Rapha and Ollie had to return to the progression cup. On ths day, disaster strikes. Charlie, in the soaring cup, submits a 4 hour 38 minute effort to the one hour soaring cup. This brought a 703 point deduction cancelling out all of UoL's soaring cup efforts, placing them firmly in bottom place. The progression cup still stands strong now with a 2200 point lead over second place. Day five brings more strong winds, Loughbrough work flat out to narrow UoL's overall lead to only 500 points following Charlie's penalty. Ollie and Rapha work hard to reduce the damage in the soaring cup while the pre-solo students continue to work away at progression cup points. The final day of the competition, day 6, see's fierce competition all over the airfield. Weekend reinforcements that were unable to leave their day-to-day commitments for the competition help to consolidate UoL's success.
The UoL flying team come second overall, by 49 points to Loughbrough. A bittersweet resukt following the 703 point penalty. However most importantly UoL won the progression cup by over 2000 points, meaning they shall host the interuni gliding competition in the 25/26 acadmic year!!
UoL flying team would like to say a big thank you to Rapha, Ollie, Charlie, Kirsten, Abdulmalik, Natasha, and Cesca for coming to compete, and for Jed and Lewis's instruction during the competition. Further thanks to Simon, Sally and the rest of the gliding centre team for their continued support, and to the University of Leicester for their financial support. Of course thanks to Saltby gliding club for hosting a great competition with even better bar prices!