The Bicester Regionals 2009 were a great success. The weather was not as nice as we would have liked, due to the jet stream moving to the wrong place, but Dan the MetMan did a great job of forecasting, enabling Ken Hartley to set tasks to match the conditions. Overall we had five days in the Open Class and four days in the Sports Class (increasing wind strength on one day prevented them from flying).
There were at least 28 people working hard to make the Regionals a success, giving up at least a week's holiday to be there - and many were not even members of the club! For example, the girls in Control travelled from Liverpool and Portsmouth, just to help us out, and a group of Scouts also turned up to help with launching and lots of other jobs, including keeping the place tidy.
As for the winners, John Wilton won the Open Class, with local pilots John Roberts (131) second and Martin Durham in LS8 third. In the Sports Class it was definitely local hero time, with Sunay Shah in HGG in first place, beating Ian Smith and Micky Boik in AA into second place and Cris Emson (sharing 379 with Red Staley) in third place.
We had many regular visitors competing, but with overlapping Nationals at each weekend, the turnout reduced was to 54 pilots (27 in each class). However we still seem to be the most popular Regionals in the country as we had a bigger entry than any other Regionals.
