The BAeA power Unlimited Team

UK Judge:
Graham Hill
Assistants:
Ian Scott and
Julie Wood

Tuesday July 5th
Footnote from the Judges Assistants line....

Back from hot hot hot Burgos last night, into Belfast reality again..... On Saturday at 2:30pm it was 40°c walking back to the hotel, then still 28°c @8.45pm on the way to the evening "do" at the aerodrome. Here it isn't. We split our time assisting Aldo Marengo (Italy) and Matti Mecklin (Finland), and very educational it was too. Strict prevention of flying-order info means you recognise your a/c and perhaps a few others, but apart from the Russian team yellow+blue Su-31-M3's, Klaus's red Extra and the Edge-540's / Staudachers, most are effectively anonymous. It does make a difference.
 

Overall impressions:
	Stunning abruptness and accuracy from many pilots, some pushes that must have been >10g, great flying from most .... but as usual, wherever you go, not always from the 'rump'.
	Vast rangy flight envelopes using all the box laterally and much more vertically (high penalties were ignored on the judging line, many of the starting-dives coming from almost out-of-sight) to cope with the 5-6-7,000ft density altitude, making it a bit like trying to eyeball a Standard class S1 dot-in-the-distance the far side of the box at 4k' sometimes.... through stinging-sun-tan-cream-in-the-eyes too. I thought my new chroma-thingy specs had died, it was that bright.
	A near-impossible task telling real flicks from well executed nod-yaw-aileron jobbies, mostly. Some were 'buried', the majority probably fair attempts at the real thing, but many seemed to end up quite axial and too slow.... and in the bright sunlight the application of significant aileron was often noticeable. The best did it right, the worst didn't.
	Firm management from CJ John Gaillard when HZ's, SZ's and scores were mixed together from poorly executed manoeuvres (not too infrequent....), and real concern from individual judges that their HZ fault rate could compromise their future judging opportunities. I'm not too sure that the HZ rules are good enough yet, but any dissent was usually quite rapidly addressed. At least the video is now only a last resort, not the constant useless interruption it has too often been.
	Early protest-dogged winds being later ignored to get the sequences through.... no surprise there then!
	The general cloud-base most days being at 5-6k' or higher - it looked like UK stuff but @ twice the altitude, courtesy of the hugely bigger land-mass etc..
	Dramatic calm > big gusts > fast arriving TS activity > frantic aeroplanes-into-the-hangar action > crash-bang-wollop-downpour > all gone > resume...!
	'Normal' 300hp Lycomings and 360-MP14's sounding quite puny, the pumped-up stuff sharper.... and the Russian team's 450hp jobs a real advantage. Quite a lot of cute throttle manipulation too, to slow the down verticals and 45's and manage overall energy the better.
	The Russian Team worked hard for and deservedly won the bulk of the gongs, the French tenaciously hung-in for a smaller part of the action, the US came in strength and depth but couldn't manage their usual effectiveness, while Tom, Gerald, Nick & Val put in a truly max effort performance to keep the rest of the world behind the Brits. It's bloody hard there at the top, believe me, and they did tremendously well.
	Lovely bunch of people - pilots, team personnel, judges, familiar faces. Pretty good food (some of the Adv ones I've done have definitely been Clangers soup kitchen affairs....), good hotels for the fare-payers. A bit more pre-planning, leadership / clarity / drive from the organisation in the early stages could surely have avoided some seemingly inexplicable delays..... the Saturday day-out-for-some-at-the-Red-Bull-races went down like a lead balloon.

Next time - just GO .... get involved. It is inspiring, satisfying, memorable, good for the soul, a re-positioner of life targets.
Nick & Jen

Saturday 2nd July
Hi folks, hot off of my mobile from Uncle earlier this evening. No use waiting for any of them to post, they are all dead drunk tonight at the American Wine and Cheese Evening and I’m back home after a very long day of fast camel and slow pigeon.

Final WAC Results
Thomas Cassells 14th Overall
Gerald Cooper 23rd Overall
Nick Onn 39th Overall
UK-Team Placing 4th Overall after Russia 1st, France 2nd, USA 3rd.
Ok the winner was Sergei Rakhmanin Russia, Oleg Schpoliansky (guess), Renard Ecalle (might be a frog), and Svetlana Kapanina (guess again).

Sooper dooper results. Congratulations to……………… First and foremost Tom 'n Jerry, Eric Vazeille their superb trainer, Nick Onn and Val Rahmani, Uncle Alan Cassidy Team Manager, Peter Rounce Asst. Team manager/Bagger Nadger and top SU29 pilot, plus a cast of thousands on the judging line till 9:00 pm most nights in some very very hot sun.…. Graham Hill (Judge), Scotty and Julie (Caller and scribe), Jen and Nick (scribes), and everything supported by the Barmy Army of mesen’, Corinne, Luke Goddard, G-meter, and Sarah, and finally to the amazing organisational skills of hosts the Spanish Aero Club

Kind Regards
JP

Friday 1st July
Ola,

WAC2005 report from Pete Rounce..

As the competition progresses and some of us are fading from the heat, beer and coffee - Tom and Gerry are finding their feet and working their way up the scoreboard.

GB Results from Unknown 1 -
Tom 13th with 70.44%, Gerry 16th with 69.17%, Nick 35th with 57.65%, Val 44th with 45.27%, out of 47.

This gives the current overall ranking as
17 Tom, 20 Gerry, 39 Nick, 46 Val, out of 48.

The Aero Club have a Sukhoi 29 here which I have been lucky enough to get a flight on - a great deal of fun, and not as violent as I had expected - I suspect Jorge was being kind doing flicks at only 200kmh. The machine has around 410hp and is built significantly more solidly than myself, but handled extremely well. Today I will try to do the UK Standard Known sequence in the box when the Judges are having lunch. Corrine, JP, Luke, Richard & Sarah Gee have all arrived, and we now have the start of the second unknown - I can hear Nick Onn doing the warm-up now.

Cheers & see you at Fenland
Pedro

Nick was very disappointed with the scoring of his 6-figure free. There were no hard zeroes or lows, but he got hammered on some rotation errors on figure 1 and thereafter the judges saw more mistakes than I did. The judging was generally more critical than I have seen in recent years, witness the 89% (including bonus) of the winner. But they seemed particularly savage with Nick. Val flew all the figures properly, but suffered a low penalty which was another marginal call. Two or three others also fell foul of the low lines. Tom's flight was very good and we all expected it to be top 20, but others saw things slightly differently. Still 21 is a good launch pad for the unknowns. Gerald would have been better placed but for a strange situation in the spin. We all saw a big yaw wobble at the end of the spin which caused the judges to haul off a lot of points - soft zero from some. It was only after that we discovered his engine had stopped during the spin and after recovering he was trying to get it restarted while flying the 3/4 loop and following rolls!! This morning we are due to start the 1st Unknown, but the warm-up pilot has reported the cloud-base to be 600m, so we will have to wait a bit. Here are some piccies courtesy of Graham Hill to keep you occupied.

A good day...
Alan

If you thought War and Peace went on a bit, it had nothing on the qualifying programme for the 23rd WAC. I think 4 days is a record, but not one that any organiser would want to beat in future. The weather played a small part, but then so did a hundred other things. Let's just hope that things speed up a bit from now on. Briefing for the Free was finished today at 9.30 and it is planned to have the paperwork etc all in place for a warm-up flight at 11.30. Last landing is planned for 21.00. The wind was in limits at the briefing, but we'll see now what gives later.

The Q results were disappointing for us, and it would not be fair entirely to blame the judges or their dogs. This was a very technical programme - witness the score of 78% by the winner (Renaud Ecalle from France) which is historically quite low. The judges were being rightly critical of a lot of difficult figures. Gerald's flight can best be described as steady, and he got the best result of our 4. Tom was somewhat affected by all the delays and might have fared better with an earlier flight. Keeping the focus for such a long time is hard. Nick also had three delays to contend with, but also a slightly sick aeroplane. His figures were all quite neat, but he was hit by a 5-5 split of the judges for a low call after figure 8. The Chief Judge cast his deciding vote as a low so Nick lost 250 points in the final reckoning.

As I write this, Nick is flying a technical test flight having replaced some carburettor jets in the hope of getting a little better running out of the engine. At 3000ft amsl, performance is at a premium here and a slightly down engine is a big handicap, especially with a 6-figure free to come later today. Lets hope the engine goes better this afternoon.

The figures for the first unknown were drawn last evening, and the UK proposal for the sequence is attached. Pretty straight forward, I don't think.

Alan

"Earlier today, we were all crushed to learn that the Falcon jet which was sent to pick up the Red Bull pilots couldn't land at Burgos because the runway was too short. A funeral pall was cast over the entire championships and we almost couldn't carry on. They had to drive almost an hour to get to the long runway place and surely they were impacted by the pressure of such a drive. Now they're faced with the possibility of hitting air filled pylons and flying too slow around corners. We're pulling for them and hope they can overcome such tribulations. Such sacrifice deserves the respect of pilots throughout the world, and especially those at the world championships of aerobatic stunt flying, and of course we're with them all the way."

Hey - irony from the Cousins!

We are stood down today for entirely obscure reasons which may or may not have anything to do with the Red Bull air race in Austria or the sensitivities of the local chamber of commerce in Burgos.

We will try to get a training flight later for Tom and Nick. Nick also needs to change the tyres round on the 26. So there will be maintenance as well, but at a very slow, Spanish pace. We are not really pleased with Val (64%) and Gerald's (71%) scores for the Q, but it is just a Q. Looks like this could be the year for an overall lady champion if Svetlana K maintains form through the unknowns. The judging generally yesterday was quite critical with lower percentages for the best pilots compared with other Q programmes. Maybe they are getting more discrimination, or maybe this was a very technical Q. Perhaps a bit of both.

More anon, and looking forward to seeing you ALL here next week.
Alan
(pass the rioja please)

Flying of Q started this morning. But the wind was fickle and necessitated a box 180 after pilot 3. Finished first 12 by 14.30 lunch break, so Gerald and Val have both flown. Will hopefully get scores soon, but we do not anticipate any disasters from what we saw. Unlike pilot #4 who missed out figure 4 to collect 6 HZs. Oops. One of our transatlantic cousins I believe....

Bye for now
Alan

Thursday 23rd June
Met Man Heaven.

Red sky in the morning... So it was raining heavily by 0800, but wait, we will fly when the rain stops. The rain stopped. The sun came out. The judging line was prepared. They set forth to give judgement. The warm-up pilot steadied her nerves with a large tequila slammer.

I was chatting to Liz Cook, the Australian Jury member who was also monitoring flight line for the afternoon. I was spinning the apocryphal yarn of the Cape Town wind that was only declared 'out of limits' after a Portaloo capsized with a Jury member aboard. Then they sent up a balloon to measure the wind, but alas the balloon was wont to horizontality. The limit is 24 knots. The readout showed 28 at 1500 feet, but then I realized that this was not knots, but metres per second. 28 m/s is actually very close to 56 knots. Just as I was thinking maybe we should put the first few aeroplanes back in the hangar, the Cape Town incident was totally eclipsed by the skyward motion of the whole row of Team tents. I'm sure you remember the shower scene from the movie 'Mash'. You know, when hotlips is suddenly exposed by the guys collapsing the canvas screen. Well, this time it was Max Ungricht, the Swiss Clocks' Team Manager. One moment he was sitting in his tent reading the paper; the next second he was exposed to the world as the canvas rose magically over his head. The row of tents levitated like a seam coming unstitched until the weight finally collapsed onto the US facility, from which there was a very rapid mass evacuation.

Flying was cancelled for the day as a result of this extreme event which, of course, "never happens in Spain at this time of year". Just like there are never storms in Oklahoma in August etc etc.. To illustrate a point, a picture of the team tents is attached, together with some team piccies.

Briefing 0900 tomorrow. Perhaps even some flying.
Alan

Hello everyone,
After an impressive thunderstorm at the end of day one, day two started in pouring rain. Went to briefing and told to come back later - are we in Spain or the UK?

Spent next three hours checking through Frees (one or two interesting errors) which passed the time. Then the rain stopped , the sun came out so we had lunch...

After lunch we decide to start - hurrah! They decide to use a bus to take the judges to the line but there is no key to the gate. Key eventually found and bus drives at judging line (yes we could have walked there in 5 minutes). No chairs or anything, pause, chairs arrive, pause, eventually judging line sort of set up. During this time the wind gradually increased until it was clearly outside limits. Before we could consider abandoning the judging line it abandoned us. Gusts approaching 60kts came through destroying the main organisers tent shortly followed by the judges tent which did a three roll snap before finally collapsing just before reaching an electrified railway line and the ladies loo which only managed a 2 of 4 roll before coming to a stop leaking blue fluid (a re-fly will be will be allowed as this is considered a tech fault.

So we WALK back to the offices and give up for the day - maybe things will be better tomorow.
All the best,
Ian Scott

Sorry for the late update but Ocana lacked any internet access although it was a fantastic training venue at altitude with high temperatures. All aircraft performed surprisingly well although we are starting the dive on oxygen. Having now arrived at the contest site and had the opportunity to fly in the box we are all far from downtrodden about our prospects.

We have seen all pilots fly and I can honestly say that we field a very competitive team of pilots who certainly deserve and posess the skill to be at the top. If we have a weakness it is that we do not field a big enough team to allow one of us to make a mistake without destroying the teams chances each time we filed a team. So take the plunge and get involved in the most demanding challenging form of "sport" flight that there is. Sure at times its frightening, painful, expensive and with no real end in sight but surely that's a definition of endeavour.

So, Head's UP boys and girls coz we have a contest!!
Gerald

See you soon?
Alan