| Last year's bronze-medal winning
BAeA Team of Nick Buckenham, Nick Wakefield and Mark Jefferies are joined
again by Kester Scrope and Dave Kaberry (1997/8 Team member), and
newcomers Steve Griffiths, Martin Sandford and Cas Smith. With
Graham Hill and Steve Green judging and assisting for the UK we have a
full team - and quite a strong one too.
The Team plan to fly out to train with Alan at Mnichovo
Hradiste for a week in the Czech Republic prior to the competition,
transiting the relatively short distance up to Grossenhain on the
afternoon of Wednesday 19th. Mnichovo was the 1999 AWAC site, and
has the advantage for the Brits of a hard runway with generally the same
layout as the contest site in Grossenhain.
The German Aerobatic Club are running a web-site for the
championships at http://www.awac2000.com
and we will also try to send back emails regarding Team progress to the
BAeA E-Groups exploder.
BULLETIN 1 - 12th July 2000
Due to Alan competing in WAC he will
only be here for a short while for training and so I have assumed the
mantle of team diarist. All the ferry pilots (me, Mark J, Nick W,
Nick B, and Martin S) arrived at a somewhat unpronounceable airfield (Mnichovo
Hradiste) in the Czech Republic today for training, with the exception
of Cass Smith. Cass 'The Phantom' Smith was last heard of yesterday
somewhere in Holland, since then nothing has been heard and we are all
hoping that he does not do anything in that famously liberal country
that we wouldn't.
Close by to our training site is another
airfield (Mlada Boleslav - where we trained last year) where the
Americans (lovingly referred to in rhyming slang as the Sceptics) are
known to be training. En-route to our field I had a look in the
control tower for them (with Mark on my wing) and only spotted a couple
of surprised faces, and Martin with Nick could not find any more of them
in their hangar!! Anyway it was nice to let them know that the Brits
have arrived, and we are joining them for a hog roast on Saturday night,
it will be good to see some of those that some of us saw last year.
We all enjoyed good weather with the
exception of near Maastricht, flying between 10000 and 2000 feet
all the way, and all aeroplanes remain serviceable. Mark and I both
fitted in a quick practice flight too - with only a 3Hr 40Min transit we
both felt the urge to fly. We (well Mark Jefferies) have organised for
box markers to be flown in so that we can replicate the competition box
here, an interpreter, we have two hire cars, a 2000metre runway (well
big anyway), a compliant local Mayor, 3500 litres of fuel, 100 litres of
oil, and steak and chips organised for lunch - we are like pigs in sh*t.
The food tonight was good, and excellent
value at GBP2.50 a head (incl. beer!). The hotel is uncomfortable, but
still good value at GBP4.50 per head!! Tomorrow we hope that Alan
Cassidy, Dave Kaberry, Steve Griffiths, and the Phantom will join us -
then let the practice begin. However the UK is not the only country to
have its summer blighted by bad weather as our arrival here has been preceded
by a fortnight of rain etc. so fingers crossed.
I am must now unpack and find out what I
have forgotten, (however it cannot be as serious as Nick Wakefield's plight as he appears to have forgotten his hairdryer) so goodnight.
Tomorrow let the training begin!
(Turns out that the Internet has not arrived
here yet, in fact I cannot dial out of my room either- so if this gets
to you I will have e mailed it from the airfield tomorrow a.m. so...
today let the training begin!)
Kester
BULLETIN 2 - 24TH JULY
Good weather enabled Martin and I to get
away from the UK on Wed 12th, dropping steadily further behind
the speedier Mark and Kester duo (who started at Gransden) while
they passed back increasingly dodgy weather reports - Maastricht being
the low point.... We stopped there briefly whilst they pressed on, and
a subsequent refuel at Karlovy Vary saw us eventually at Mnichovo
Hradiste by about 5.45 Czech time with just over 6hrs on the clock.
Time for a beer! The aeroplanes were all here now except Cas and
his S2B, who were reported as being holed-up somewhere in the
Netherlands. Uncle Al, Dave K and Steve Griffiths over-nighted
in Prague brought car-type transport on Thursday afternoon.
I haven't kept a log of the week.... notable
events were the arrival of Cas on Thursday just ahead of the other
three, a series of drizzly days with good enough patches for some
strenuous training - mostly in between the rain but the Yak's prop
says otherwise, excellent and very cheap food provided you can
get it all down before the waitresses seemingly universal and very
sharply applied 10.0 o'clock curfew, and an unfortunate disagreement
between Dave and the '222 about how to cope with the crosswind on a
wet concrete runway that resulted in three very short propellor blades
and a completely retracted undercarriage. The eventual result of much
conversation is that Kester had just a few days to find out how to
drive the Laser, and Dave has returned to the UK via Dijon to collect
his 231EX.
On Wed 19th the USA Team transferred
briefly to Hradiste - they'd been training just down the road at
Boleslav where we were all together last year - so we could all clear
a hastily convened Customs desk and make the 40 minute hop to the
contest site at Grossenhain. Having started the day with
undoubtedly the best weather we'd seen for the whole week, the trip
was a minor nightmare of heavy cloud and rain through the north Czech
hills and an arrival during which most of us could hardly see the man
ahead in the circuit. Not auspicious!!
The aerodrome itself is an abandoned
Russian military base, hastily being refurbished to cope with 67
pilots and associated entourage. However...... the *******y rain and
low cloud is extremely persistent, and by Friday evening only the
first two pilots have flown the 'Q' during two whole days. With the
cloud-base at barely 800m Martin had some tight moments flying second,
whilst third to go US man Dave Schwartz was back on the tarmac after
several minutes fruitless cloud bashing. The downpour has lasted
through most of today (Saturday) and during the day there developed
firstly a real fear from the organisers that programme curtailments
could well be necessary - closely followed by what can only be
described as a wholesale mutiny by the pilot fraternity regarding the
much unloved 'Q' process. The initial move took the form of a formal
Brit proposal to a) forget the 'Q', b) get straight into the Free, c)
allow up to the first 4 'Q' figures as safety manoeuvres prior to each
pilots' free, and d) extend the time limit to 18 minutes. After a
meeting of all Team Managers with the CD Hans Vogtmann had generally
approved the plot, this was tidied up by the CIVA Jury to just the
'normal' Free - but only provided the 'Q' could be binned without
breaking the rules. This was achieved through the bizarre process
of each Team refusing to fly the 'Q' during the ensuing general
briefing, whereupon Martin's scores (and those of the Italian girl
Elena Corte) were declared zeroed and not relevant to the proceedings.
Wow!!
A further dainty problem is that the
'auto-entry' scoring system (it works a bit like the UK auto lottery
ticket reader) can apparently only cope with ten judges, so the eleven
present are each diplomatically attempting to ensure that it is
another who practices the sword falling routine. Gilbert and Sullivan,
eat your heart out....
The tense business of unknown figures
submission was immediately put in hand, 'our' one (we drew 4th spot)
being a rather tasty half-snap from erect to inverted / 4-of-8 roll
same direction to erect again / push down half loop /
one-and-a-half rolls to erect.... to show (we hope) a barrel-y final
roll from the Zlin-50 brigade. The usual (!) protest by the Italian
Team of the Russian figure (45deg humpty with half roll up / pull /
half snap down) was eventually withdrawn, and the $20 note
peremptorily demanded by Mike Heuer presumably retrieved. Our sequence
submission has this evening been translated into a smart Aresti-5
drawing and will meet the Jury tomorrow morning.
See y'all soon.
Nick B
THE LAST WORD. . . .
In the end the French first unknown sequence
was accepted, theirs having I think one less "jury figure"
than ours did. The programme-1 Free finally kicked-off during the early
afternoon after the inevitable morning cloud and drizzle had dissipated,
with Elena Corte in pole slot again - followed by Martin, Dave Swartz
and the rest of the pack. The judges drew lots to decide who'd sit it
out on the side, the unfortunate Lithuanian getting the short straw. The
order of flight was perforce that already randomly decided for the
unflown 'Q'. Most of the flying went according to plan, but as in
any aerobatic contest the Brain-Farts were sprinkled all around. At the
end (it took two days for all 67 flights) Russia's Vladimir Popov with
83.89% was the man to beat in positively the dirtiest Yak-55M you have
ever seen, with Frenchman Richard Lothoz less than 1% behind. Last
year's champion Petr Biskup was fourth, our leader Mark Jefferies 10th,
Nick Wakefield 13th, Kester 25th (in Marks Laser), yours truly 28th, Cas
Smith 57th, and Martin Sandford 61st - the final pilot with over 70%.
That's sixty-one pilots with over 70%, right? It ain't easy, I tell
you! Swiss man Matthias Glutz in his Eagle had an extensive and
rather altitude-challenged skirmish so far behind the judges that the
video crew couldn't get their camera to swivel that far back, leading to
(a) his exclusion and (b) a two hour pause whilst the video was
relocated atop one of the many earth covered hardened aircraft shelters
some distance further away from the box, there to record the evidence in
case anyone else became similarly engrossed inside the cockpit.... The
first unknown was next run in the reverse order of the Free finishing
ranking, except for the unfortunate Matthias who remained at the head of
the list with nil points. The rate of BF's rose somewhat, and it soon
became much clearer which teams had practiced a good range of nasty
figures and which had remained in more staid territory. Our ten unknowns
full of quite tricky stuff during training in Czech with Alan stood us
in pretty good stead here, though Kester plummeted to 63rd through some misdemeanor
whilst the rest of us if anything did slightly better - Mark's 7th with
78.05% being a particularly good effort that brought him up to 6th in
the overall standings. We did at this stage entertain visions of a bit
more effort on our parts getting us up past the Septics into third spot
in the Team rankings, but in the event the second unknown saw us
suffering a few failures whilst the men of Texas etc. put in some fine
performances that took them quite close to the French. At this sort of
event, with the best saved for last, the tension gets quite tangible and
even minor transgressions are treated with howls of glee and derision by
the other Teams - most pilots by this time propping up the corner of the
beer tent and "talking unlimited in the bar" as they say.
Richard Lothos proved the adage 'The higher you go the further you
fall....' by (we guess) reading one line too far ahead from the sequence
card when about four figures into his slot, the ensuing fine
demonstration of BF unceremoniously trashing him from his previous 2nd
spot to 59th in this sequence and 30th overall, shaking the French position to within an ace of the raring Yanks. That was
Friday, the final day being reserved for a top-ten shoot out via a third
unknown. The weather however had other views, and so in the final
analysis it was the strength and depth of the French entourage that
prevailed, leaving Popov and Co to
scoop the Team gold from France and the Americans (with us in fourth
spot), whilst Vladimir Popov became the new owner of the WeltMeisterschaft crown.
Continuing low cloud and driving rain allowed us to visit Meissen (a bit
boring frankly) and Colditz Castle (spooky....!) before the final evening Fliegerball. This was a superb
affair, with (Wakers calculated) in excess of 500 seats to fill in the
huge and rapidly assembled marquee. The presentations were handled with
ruthless German efficiency, every possible worthy and his mate being
co-opted to hand over the individual sequence and overall gongs to their
proud recipients. A new and extremely handsome Advanced World
Championship Trophy was presented by the South African team in memory of
Pete Celliers, the buffet was excellent, countless litres of fizzy
German beer
helped it all down, the band was loud and groovy, the flamethrower man threw
lots of flames, national flags were signed all over by throngs of pilots and
judges, and in the end lots of people promised to meet again at a
championship somewhere in the world in two years time. Rock and roll,
where will we all be in 2002? Hope I'm there! Nick
B
Click here for the final AWAC-2000 results
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