Our History

How it all began......

Flyevent started in 2015. But the roots of the company are far older than that.

Brett became involved in organising events as far back as 1997. The first was a small club event in England, Birdwings. They often organised events, with the one having the biggest impact being the annual Winter Cup they ran. It had an interesting focus on Fun... not competition. Very refreshing.

Over the net few years Brett was invited to assist with organising the BHPA's two events, the Festival of Free Flight & the annual winter indoor Free Flying show. These were open to the public and regularly attracted up to 5,000 visitors.

By 2002 Brett had moved on to organising the British Championships Accuracy in South Wales for a few seasons, also winning the event in 2001, 2002 & 2005. In this time there were record numbers of pilots attending with over 100 pilots at each event.

2003 saw Brett organising guided trips around Europe. Something he still does now, and at the peak was around 18 trips in a season.

In 2007 Brett became involved in Cross Country competitions, and quickly moved to assisting with them. This started as being the 'local contact' for location around Europe, but quickly moved on to organising them entirely.

On a wet afternoon in Italy in 2012, Brett spent a frustrating several hours trying to persuade his driver, Toby Colombe, that there was a market for 'fun competitions'. The culmination of all those years experience showed that people did not want just serious competitions, but that a more light hearted approach could be adopted. In 2013 they ran the first Gin Wide Open, which became legendary and helped reshape the competition scene worldwide.

As part of that venture, Brett not only wanted to bring a fun element to competitions, but he also wanted to incorporate the latest technologies into the events. In the first year they rented a set of trackers that had come to market. Unfortunately they proved to be hopelessly unreliable, with only around 30% of them working, leaving the scoring a complete mess. But perseverance in the goal led to the discovery of a better brand of trackers that had been produced for the Red Bull X-Alps, that had been over manufactured, and were available (with some persuasion) to be purchased. In 2014 the events were transformed and the tracking became better than 95% reliable. Safety was elevated to unprecedented levels, viewer tracking became a reality and scoring was now possible without pilot instruments.

In 2015 we decided to make these technologies available to others to use, and in doing so we invested in another tracker technology that was brought to market, the Flymaster 360 tracker. This too has gone through some iterations and we continue to invest in each generation as it is released. We now have around 800 trackers available for rental at a low cost to organisers around the world, and we continue to make ourselves available to bring our unique skills to events around the world that want to elevate their event with our services.

Edit: 2022. Tracking marches on! This year we converted the fleet of F1 trackers in to the new F6 tracker. It now has a 6,000mAh batter, so it can last for 3 continous days use for H&F events, and with rapid charging, so it still charges in around 6 hours from flat. We are also now exploring 4g tracking options for the 2023 season.

Here is a list of some events that have benefited from our help in recent times:

• Belgian Nationals
  2014 - Kobarid (MD) (T) (S)
  2018 - St Jean Montclar (MD) (T) (S)
  2019 - Grand-Bornand (T) (S)
  
• British Champs
  2011 - Kobarid
  2012 - Meduno
  2014 - (Pre-PWC) Gemona
  2014 - Ager (MD) (T) (S)
  2016 - Gemona (MD) (T) (S)
  2018 - Feltre (MD) (T) (S)
  2020 - Colombia (T)* (S)*
  2021 - Le Grand Bornand (T) (S)
  2021 - Gemona (T) (S)
  2022 - Le Grand Bornand (T) (S)
  2022 - Gemona (T) (S)
  
• Gin Wide Open - 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 (MD) (T) (S)
• Naviter Open -   2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 (MD) (T) (S)
• FlyFurther -       2014, 2017, 2018, 2021 (MD) (T) (S)
• Freedom Open - 2020, 2021 (MD) (T) (S)
• India Open -     2018, 2021(MD) (T) (S)
• Colombian Nationals
  2020 - Colombia (T)* (S)*
• Panchgani Open
  2018 - Panchgani (T)
  2019 - (Pre-PWC) Panchgani (MD) (T) (S)
• Italian Open
  Poggio Bustone, 2018 (T) (S)
• Italian Nationals
  2017 - Gemona (dMD) (T) (S)
• PWC            
  2016 - Gemona (MD) (T) (S)
  2021 - Gemona (T)
• Nordic Championships
  2014 - (Pre-PWC) Gemona (MD) (T) (S)
  2016 - St John Montclar (MD) (T) (S)
  2017 - Kobarid (MD) (T) (S)
• BGD Weightless
  2018 - Slovenia (MD) (T) (S)
  2019 - St Jean Montclar (MD) (T) (S)
  2020 - Colombia (MD) (T) (S)
  2021 - Gemona (MD) (T) (S)
  2022 - Piedrahita (MD) (T) (S)
• Asian Games
  2018 - Indonesia (T) (S)
• Monte Grappa Trophy
  2019 - Bassano (T) (S)
  2021 - Bassano (T) (S)
  2022 - Bassano (T) (S)
• Pakistan Hunza Gala
  2019 - Hunza Valley (T) (S)
• Winter Race (HG)
  2019 - Slovenia

(MD) - Meet Director
(T) - Tracking
(S) - Scoriing
* - Assisting