What a weekend! Was really nice to see the faces behind the posts on the forum and meet up with friends, old and new. It started with absolute perfect flying conditions on Friday morning and despite a blown fuse overhead Middelburg that left me without radio, GPS or instruments for the rest of the trip, it just could not get any better and I touched down after 3 hours 30 mins.

. The competition on Saturday took place in very windy conditions and tested some of our take-off and landing skills and the judges (read Rosie McFee

) kept on inventing new disciplines ostensibly to separate the contestants but I think the beers tasted better next to the runway than in the pub.

.The prize giving dinner was hilarious and some of the costumes were brilliant. The Master of ceremonies aka Franfenfurter had us all in stitches as he controlled the audience like an experienced puppeteer. The big winners were Skin, Paul Coetser and the Mulders (Paul & Dionne)

in the competition and I was unfairly awarded the Bermuda Triangle Award for getting lost on short finals

despite the fact that I so eloquently convinced everyone at the initiation barrel roll of what exactly happened. The trip back today was equally perfect and we crossed the escarpment at 10500' without any trace of wind. Paul and I decided to be the sweepers just to make sure nobody was left behind and met the rest of the gang at Middelburg. As I crossed the R50 someone switched on the tumbledrier and the rest of the trip was very unpleasant. After telling Lanseria ATC that I didn't have time for small talk and had to concentrate on flying and landing my trike, I had my worst ever attempted landing as I got blown violently off the threshold 10'off the deck and had to do a go around after which I had my worst ever successful landing after a five hour leg

but all's well that ends well and I was very relieved to call Lanseria to report safely on the ground.

Thanks to all involved for a fantastic event and weekend which is undoubtedly one of the bucketlist microlight events .See you there next year.