The 1st Centralised competition of 2002 was held at Oakington on April 7^th with the site being shared with the speed and aerobatics fraternity. The weather was dry albeit a bit on the cool side with a fair breeze blowing and gradually easing throughout the day. It had also been intended to run British Goodyear but no entries we received.

9 Teams cam out to "blow out the cobwebs" some using old and trusted gear while others had new and untried machines

A big thanks must go to Brian Turner who has put a lot of hard work into improving the racing circle (and also the main practice circle). The racing circle now has 12 smooth pitting areas allowing the Event CD to select the best option for the prevailing wind. And line markings are now excellent.

The new 2m flying circle was employed for the first time - this being marked using an orange chalk stick manufactured by Dave Rudd.

The first round began at 12 noon and all races had problems (typical of the first outing of the year) - Three teams suffered with broken props (S/B M/Y B/S) at their first pitstops and Colin Brown suffering a badly split third finger when connecting square on with the wings leading edge. Leading the way at the end of round one were Ross/Turner with a 3:21.1 and Barker/Tompkins in 2^nd spot with 3:41.0

In the second round Ross/Turner improved to a 3:19.2 and Fitzgerald/Thomason put in a 3:37.0 to move into second spot. Fry/Whorton recorded a 3:43 and Smith/Brown a 3:49. Most of the teams suffered either overheating trouble or range problems both of which invariably resulted in extra stops.

In the first heat of the third round Barker/Tompkins put in their fastest ever 3-up time of 3:39.8 with Langworth/Broadhead running in at the first pitstop. Ross/Turner then had another good run recording 3:18.3 with both Fitzgerald/Thomason and Fry/Whorton returning 3:34 exactly. Fry/Whorton took around 4 laps on Mike and Mark during the race because of better airspeed but lost it on the pitstops.

The final round saw Smith/Brown put in a 3:30.6 having started the race cold and gradually built up heat until the crawled round the last few laps cooking up totally. Ross/Turner were dq'd for releasing and impeding a landing model. Otherwise there were to be no changes in this round.

The top three teams elected not to fly a final so the results were taken from the heats with Ross/Turner leading by a mile, Smith/Brown in 2^nd spot and Fitzgerald/Thomason taking 3^rd in front of Fry/Whorton due to the better backup time.

It was good to see the new pair of Bainbridge/Saunders having a go at the FAI Team Race and It was also nice to be able to report that, following an incident free day, all of the teams were able to take their equipment home in one piece to fly another day.

Many thanks go to Dave Rudd for acting CD on the day

League Points were awarded as follows :-