Registration was amusing on Saturday as all the World’s best pilots queued up to present paperwork, FAI Licences and GPS’s to the organisation. Arriving in my normal shambolic manner half an hour before registration was due to close there seemed to be some sort of drinking competition going on outside the registration building. A water drinking competition.
To explain, at FAI comps (in fact any FAI sanctioned comps but they never check at smaller ones) you have to adhere to a rule stating that you must not carry more than 33kg in addition to your body weight. This is presumably done for safety to ensure 45kg girls are not trying to take off and land with 50kg of lead in their harnesses. However for the slightly ‘fuller’ man such as myself it does present a problem in that my kit already weighs around 28 kilos leaving me only 5 kilos max to play around with flying weights. This applies to a lesser degree to pretty much anyone over about 80kg as they need bigger wings, reserves, harnesses and even flying boots which all add up.
Quite a few pilots had worked this out and were quaffing as much water as they could before registering. Yassen Sassov looked like a Ninja Turtle his belly was so big whilst our own Jamie Messenger had somehow crammed nearly 4 litres into his distended gut and borrowed some huge flying boots which looked like they could have done the Apollo Moon Missions justice before he was weighed. Other ruses included putting a lot of borrowed coins in pockets and heavy cameras slung over the shoulder and hopefully not noticed by the weigh-in staff. I could only fit 2 litres in my already crowded stomach before nausea got the better of me but it added a useful 2kg to my ‘ballast allowance’ meaning I can now carry 4.5kg without fear of going over the limit. Aside from anything else there are some places you could land around here where you might walk for several hours in the equatorial sunshine so the ability to carry 3 big bottles of water with you is quite a significant safety issue.
Anyway the loos have been abnormally busy since registration as we’ve all been pissing like water buffaloes since. Ah, the glamorous life of a comp pilot…
On to the afternoon and it was time for the opening ceremony. This was a splendid affair with Mexican marching bands, cheering crowds throwing rice and confetti at us and then, unfortunately a lot of boring speeches by various dignitaries in which the pilots remained uncharacteristically restrained. We must all be getting old.
If the movie clips I’ve sent got through you can view them below. If not then you’ll just have to take my word for it! [You can find the videos below – ED]
It’s 11.30pm local time as I’m writing this and I desperately need to go to bed as we are tasking in the morning when the whole competition gets underway. Everything’s checked and ready to go and there are just some batteries to charge and instruments to organise before morning.
Wish us all luck…
Cheers, Mark H
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