Run 1

Finally, after the effort and expense it took to get here, I got to compete. From what I'm told, I'm the first foreigner to compete in this particular comp and the first American to compete in ANY Norwegian comp.

WOOHOO!!!!

All of the Norwegian pilots have been really cool and are really happy to have me come out from such a long way. I've learned a lot about what goes in a comp and as well as what you need to do to succeed. As you'll read, I have much to learn. For each run, I'll give you the tricks to be done and a summary of how I did.

Day 1 - Thursday - Run 1
As in most acro comps, the first day is always a compulsory run where the judges decide which maneuvers are performed and in what order. For Run 1, the judges gave us this:

Helico
SAT to the left
Dynamic Full Stall or Super Stall (must not be entered from trim)
Asymmetric 360 to the left
SAT to the right (in acro comps, a trick that can be on either side is considered 2 separate tricks in the same run)

The only thing that concerned me was the helico as the last time I did this in comp conditions was in the safety selection flight at Vertigo last year. Needless to say, I didn't pass mainly because I didn't helico very well.

Helico - nailed it! I got the high score of the day for this, but could've scored better if I had made it faster.
SAT left - no problems here, normal score.
DFS - I did poorly on this one as I didn't have a very good pendulum
Asymm 360 - I also did poorly here. I think they weren't high enough.
SAT right - no problems, normal score.

Landing - hit the raft perfect.

While I was very happy with the helico, I was very disappointed with the other ones which really should've been gimmes. I definitely took those for granted which was reflected in the score.

So, I found myself in 6th out of 13 pilots.