Opening Ceremony

Saturday was the perfect day to start the competition. Jan Bém, one of the senior Czech microlighters and very much one of the Richard Meredith-Hardy & Brian Milton set of microlighting heroes, orchestrated the opening ceremony and the twelve teams gathered behind their flags under a clear blue sky. At a few minutes after 10 am three parachutists dropped from the sky. One trailed the Czech flag and one the FAI flag while the third was flagless, presumably just out for a jolly. Then the band (or more accurately the recording of the band) started to play and the teams trooped on and lined up. Even though we are a relatively small team this year with only 8 aircraft we are still one of the largest here and twenty of us walked behind the Union Flag. All the teams wore some kind of national kit, which made a colourful spectacle. We Brits tend to be a bit low key in this respect, but we were all wearing BMAA baseball hats and, in case that looked too serious, we had our usual original Ben Ashman T-shirt creations. Everyone, particularly the Czechs from Jihlava, loved our T-shirts which feature the Jihlava hedgehog. I only hope Paul has brought enough. The competition was opened by the President of the Letecká Amatérská Asociace ČR (the Czech BMAA) and the speeches were short. Some competitors were disappointed that there wasn't more razzmatazz but the brevity suited me just fine. Within an hour it was over and the Jury President, Wolfgang Lintl, declared the World Championships open.