Tuesday 28 June 2022

UK National Championships 2022

The last time the UK Nationals were held was in 2019, and then covid happened .... But, after an absence of two years, the UK Nationals are back in 2022! Probably no surprise that this return happened at the Dunstable Downs.


The wind conditions were very difficult throughout the weekend. Extremely variable (down to well below 10mph, up to well above 20mph, and that often within a minute) and blustery, especially on the Sunday, and this affected everyone. I'll say a bit more about that later on.

Both 'indie' classes, dual-line individual and multi-line individual, were contested by three competitors: Josh Mitcheson, Harry Neale, and Dan Hoath. Unfortunately, the reigning dual-line individual champion couldn't defend his title as a result of catching covid ....


Only one team competing this year: Fracture in dual-line team. For several reasons, L-katz wasn't able to compete this year, and there was no multi-line team entering.

Also there was no multi-line pair. 

And then finally to dual-line pairs. Three pairs competing this year: Fracture ...


... SkyTracks ...


... and Flying Fish.


On Saturday we few Airdynamics T5 V1 kites. This definitely was the right kite on average, but never actually the right kite: during our technical routine, the kites either threatened to fall out of the sky and we had to walk backwards almost until the 'yellow' line, or raced across the sky, making them very difficult to control. Sunday, with the wind stronger, we flew V2 kites, again really struggling to control them when the wind picked up. Let's just say we have flown figures, technical routine and ballet much better than we did this weekend ...


I mentioned L-katz not competing this year, but Pea and Lisa did come to Dunstable Downs on Sunday, and we flew our technical routine as a demo. Because of the horrible wind, it wasn't our finest performance ....

As traditional, there was a mega-team on Sunday, combining Airheads, SkyTracks, L-katz (Flying Fish and Twisted Bridle) and Fracture.


Almost surely there won't be another round this year, so the titles were decided based on just a single round. Josh took both indie titles: dual-line and multi-line individual, and Fracture the dual-line pair and dual-line team titles. In addition, Harry bagged novice titles in the two 'indie' classes, and SkyTracks won the experienced title in dual-line pair. Full results are available here. 

Oh, and one final thing: you may have noticed me standing next to the field director (Vee Griffiths) in the first two pictures in this blog post. That was because I acted as shadow field director for most of the competition (except when flying or crewing), with the idea of Vee and I sharing field directing between us at future championships. 

Picture credit (Flying Fish, mega-team): Andy Taylor

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