The 2026 Gliding Varsity Match was held at Weston-on-the-Green Airfield (WOTG) between the 1st and 4th of May. It was an unfortunate Oxford win, with 802 points against Cambridge’s 640.
The Cambridge team consisted of Adam Brzosko, Darius Danaei, Darren Lim, Edgar Cifuentes, and Kate Runciman, flying CUGC’s Pegase ‘FRV’ alongside OGC’s Astir ‘554’ and T21 ‘Daisy’. The Oxford team had Adam Hu, Darshit, Jonathan, and Oscar on the first competition day (2 May), and Sergey and Teddy on the second competition day (3 May), flying a variety of OUGC and OGC aircraft.
The unusually early dates of this year’s Varsity, being held in May rather than the usual June or July months, was due to operational constraints for WOTG; namely, that it could only be operated on weekends, hence the only chance for a sufficiently long competition window would have to coincide with a long bank holiday weekend. But what this early May window meant was that, rather than the reliable soaring conditions usually expected of summer, both teams would have to deal somewhat trickier spring weather conditions.
Friday 1 May was reserved for the Cambridge pilots to perform their check flights; as such the competition began in earnest on Saturday 2 May.
First day of competition (2 May). According to the RASP forecast at the start of the day, the thermic window had been predicted to start only after lunchtime, and last only for a few short hours. In an attempt to maximize the pilots’ potentials, the Cambridge team decided to delay flight attempts until the predicted window of maximum thermals; on the other hand, the Oxford team’s pilots were generally more inexperienced (with most of them being pre-solo), and as such they decided to crack on with their flying attempts as early as possible.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, the spring weather faltered earlier than predicted, and by lunchtime the thermals had already overdeveloped. As such, only the early morning flights had been able to sustain any significant form of soaring at all; by the time the Cambridge pilots launched into the air, it was a matter of scrapping around to try to find the leftover burps and bumps.
The result was that Oxford’s pilots were able to pull ahead by 207 points, which would prove to be a unsurmountable gap.
Second day of competition (3 May). The next day saw low, thick clouds passing overhead even as early as 10am, and correspondingly the RASP forecast predicted no chance of thermic soaring at all. As such, the team captains mutually agreed that a soaring competition would be unnecessarily dangerous, and that the wet-weather “spot landing” rules should be enacted.
To achieve this, we gathered several disused white rags from the hangar, and set them up in a line (roughly 3 meters across) perpendicular to the landing direction some distance away from the launchpoint. As there was nearly no wind, we decided to set this landing target quite far ahead of the launchpoint, anticipating that overshoots were far more likely than undershoots.
Under the “spot landing” rules, points were awarded based on how closely a pilot could land near the target landing line. Specifically, pilots had to attempt the landing by performing a full normal circuit (with no abbreviations), with application of airbrakes but not wheel brakes upon touchdown; all pilots would fly in the K21 with an OGC instructor sat in the back, to verify that the circuit was flown safely and that wheel brakes were not used. Once the glider came to a stop, the shortest-line distance from the glider’s main wheel to the target landing line was measured, and the raw (unnormalised) score awarded to the pilot was $3000/(30 + d)$ where d was the distance measured in feet. Each pilot had two attempts.
[To be precise, the distances were measured in “Darren-feet”, i.e. the length of Darren’s boot from heel to toe. For the closest landings, the landing distance was manually measured by Darren walking very carefully; but for slightly further landings, the distance was measured using a rope, that had been calibrated to 13 Darren-feet; and for the furthest landings, the distance was measured by noting the GPS position of the FLARM trace, and comparing it against previous landings that were measured by step or by rope.]
As it turned out, the zero wind condition of the day’s weather proved to be extremely challenging to deal with: practically every pilot either severely overshot or undershot (necessiting the GPS-based measurements) on their first attempt. In particular, with no wind, the round-out/float phase eats up runway very quickly, with this “float distance” being extremely sensitive to both the pilot’s weight and the approach speed; once the glider touched down, the rough grass and relatively ineffective air brakes meant that the final stopping position was essentially already decided by the initial position and velocity of the round-out.
Nonetheless, despite these challenging conditions, Sergey managed a landing within 5 feet of the target landing line (with the nose wheel of the K21 resting on the rags) – very impressive! Darius also managed to achieve a landing within 26 feet, and Darren within 41 feet; all other pilots were unable to get closer than 160 feet.
After summing up all of the points from the pilots, the Cambridge team managed to eke out a very small winning margin of 46 points above Oxford. Sadly, this was not enough to overcome the previous day’s lead.
Final day of competition (4 May). The final day saw the same low clouds as day 2, with yet again no chance for soaring. Both captains agreed that, as before, a soaring competition would be unfeasible; but also, this time, that there would be little point in repeating a spot landing competition. As such, the Cambridge team conceded the victory to Oxford, with Oxford scoring a total of 802 points against Cambridge’s 640.
Many congratulations to all who competed! We look forward to next year, when we can challenge Oxford once more at our home airfield.
Darren Wayne Lim
2025-26 CUGC Captain