MGC chairman, Jon Hall opened the Midland Gliding Club's 2021 Task Week briefing with a few words to remember John Parry, who was the driving force behind the event for more years than any present cared to remember.

John's tireless endeavours in overseeing task setting and scoring often included the late-night scrutiny of hastily processed photographs for any hint of evidence of a turnpoint being rounded. As new technology crept into the world of gliding, John demonstrated a unique and masterful ability to coerce recalcitrant loggers into disgorging the bits he needed, in the right order, and most often at the right speed so they could vindicate or incriminate their owners. And all this done in good time to present scores reliably and professionally at morning briefing each day.

Jon continued by proposing that now was an appropriate time to consider doing things differently. We are all more familiar with digital tools and many have been developed since the last time Task Week was held.

Guy Hartland, competition director, continued by encouraging the competitors to make the most of the week but not to overstretch themselves and take unnecessary risks. He confessed to not being an early adopter of technology, but encouraged everyone to embrace the new ways of running Task Week and to accept that they may need to be revisited as experience is gained.

Dominic Haughton completed the briefing with an introduction to Soaring Spot, which has been adopted as the 'go-to' source of information about Task Week, followed by a met. presentation covering the 7-day outlook and a short-term forecast.

A short assigned distance task (Day 1, Task 1) was presented and reviewed for those unfamiliar with the format and scoring tasks using the BGA Mynd Task Week Ladder was demonstrated. The acquisition of NOTAMS using the NATS Aeronautical Information Service graphical interface was demonstrated and the value of using it discussed. A discussioon was held on whether competitors prefered to fly in one class or two; one class with optional short tasks set as appropriate was agreed on as the format to be adopted.

With no prospect of the weather improving, the day was scrubbed at 14:00