Just home from Tucson. A great time with super flying. Still a lot of video and pics to sort through and of course we'll be posting all on FlightPass and our HPP FaceBook page.

A memorable moment was Mark's crash of the Krill Yak. Always sad to see this happen but it does make for spectacular video. That flight is up on FlightPass now. I didn't get to speak to Mark directly, but from what I heard, he was using the same motor from another plane that had crashed in a practice flight earlier in the week. That crash was due to a deadstick. He moved that same motor to this plane (Gernot's freestyle plane from 2008-2009) and at the worst possible time it died again. In a falling rolling harrier there is simply no way to save it if the motor dies.

On the lighter side, a few of Mark's buddies, egged on I think by Mark's girlfriend Captain Morgan (far left in photo) put the Yak back together with duct tape. We took the time to pose for a few photos and Ashley got to add a few bits of duct tape as well to this shining example of a all-in-good-fun field repair.

Mark was clearly disappointed just after the crashes, but took it all in stride and showed a lot of class at the awards ceremony with kind words for Gernot and Andrew who were above him on the podium. And he stood dead still and took the point-blank champagne blast from Andrew. Quite fitting for the guy who's dished it out at the previous 5 shootouts.

Our congratulations to all the pilots and organizers of the event. I love the shootout. Once again we left with a lot of great film and even more great memories.