2023 Hike and Fly - Bullseye Results

The 2nd Annual HnF Bullseye was held on the 16th of September at Lake St Clair. This year's weather had the athelets compete in a spring heat wave of 34 degrees and moderate to strong winds and thermals. The classes and divisions were similar to last year with a few new additions. The athletes were awarded 400 points for each hike to the summit of the hill (approx 430 vertical meters), combined with their landing score: 400 points for Bullseye, 350 points for the yellow ring, 300 points for the blue ring, 250 points for the silver tarp downwind of the target and 200 points for large blue tarp upwind of the target.... Their were 2 classes as well as 2 divisions for each class. Elite class could complete as many hike and flights within the 6 hr competition window, whilst the Sports class could only have a maximum of 2 hike and flights. The divisions were open (PG4/5) and Novice (PG2/3). Another Trophy went to the "King of the Hill", which was awarded to the athlete who summited to Launch and signed onto the board first. In the case of pilots with equal combined scores, there first summit hike time dictated their overall position.

The competition was sponsered by 777 Gliders, with compression bags, conertina bags and T-shirt prizes. XCmag with 8 x £25 gift vouchers for their online store and Powerade, who supplied each competitior with 2 bottles of sports drinks to be consumed during the gruelling hikes.

New Sponsor for this year is the Australian owned sports wear brand Hike and Fly Life, who donated 4 Merino shirts, perfect for HnF adventures. To promote these prizes, we created 3 new prize categories:

1) Oldest HnF competitor

2) Slowest Hike to the summit aka "The stop and smell the roses" prize

3) The Sky Pig award - the pilot who hikes the least but flies for the longest time.....

The field was made up of 46 athletes, from low airtime novices right through to seasoned veterans of decades of flight experince. Once registration and the comp rules/risk brief were completed, the atheltes lined up for the 1015 start time of the competition. There were some smiles and nervous faces in the crowd, but as the "Eye of the Tiger" started to pump through the speaker and the countdown begun, the athletes prepared for a sprint start to the Summit, aprrox 4.3 km and 430 vertical maters....

David Wainwright was "King of the Hill" with the first ascent completed in 35mins. Lawrie Jeavons was 2nd at 37mins. Shortly after that the next wave of athletes arived and started taking off into the moderate wind.

From midday the thermals also started to produce the goods on the west facing ridge and pilots were faced with a new problem to solve, the never ending lift band which made descending even above the lake quite diffcult. Many lower airtime pilots choose to enjoy the airtime and cooler temps of altitude, then landing under big ears and another tough hike in the extreme September heat.

In total there were 87 flights completed in the 6hr window, amassing to a total of 37410 vertical meters climbed. 60 litres of water were consumed (just from the organisers - not including what atheltes brought with them), 120 bottles of powerade were drunk, 10 ice buckets were finished and lots of sweat and cramps to make the event a cracking success. Smiles all around at the presentation ceremony... Results and timings below...