Articles Air Race (Page 17)

1985 State President’s Trophy Air Race

Held at Virginia Airfield, Durban – 31 May to 1 June 1985

1985 State President’s Trophy Air Race

Virginia Airport, Durban – 1985

1985 Barnib State President’s Air Race

Held at Virginia Airfield, Durban – 31 May to 1 June 1985

The Junkers J52

By Allan Blain

Iron Annie, a name I can no longer use comfortably since flying in the beauty, or is it the beast. Confused? Well, it all started when I was invited by SAA staff to fly the second leg of the S.P. Trophy Air Race in the J U 52.
At the appointed day and time I arrived and was shown to my seat by a charming hostess. I was then welcomed by the crew of Joe Prozesky, Brian Wallace, Scully Levin, Captain Gus Schoeman, our “hosty” Antoinette Durand, and flight engineer, Theo Steyn.

1985 SP Air Race – The Junkers J52: The event of the year, the Junkers flying in the S.PFirstly, I must compliment SAA and especially those who have lobbied from within the organisation to keep the Junkers flying, and making appearances at airshows. It is vitally important as it is our historical link to our flying heritage, and an incentive to all to keep flying.

Secondly, let’s get back to the flight. We took off in rather inclement weather just before lunch, and the noise is immediately an overwhelming reminder that she is powered by three Harvard engines. Even with the industrial earmuffs we wore for the flight, it was deafening. Once fitted with the upholstery of the airline model it will be much quieter, but even so air travellers of old must have had strong eardrums. Flying in those days must have been a rather grand affair. The hostess had only a few people to look after and could give each passenger special attention. Each passenger had his own window and a large comfortable seat. Antoinette did a fantastic job of feeding us from a mouthwatering menu which consisted of caviar, crayfish tails and wines of outstanding quality. Yours truly had not one, not two, but three crayfish tails. It was heaven on earth, or accurately in the sky. I don’t think there is any finer platform for observing any aviation event, and watching the competitors pass us way below was fantastic.

To coax more speed out of the supercharged engines we stayed at over 3 000 ft agl for most of the race. Tension mounted as the other aircraft started catching us, and later as the hotships started passing us. By now crew and passengers alike were one team and we shouted encouragement to our pilots. As we finished our coffee and pralines, we started the descent for Durban and the end of the race. Soon the coastline was in sight, and we crept over the last ridge before Virginia. As we flashed over the tower, Scully Levin changed the props to full coarse pitch, and with a mighty roar we zoomed over the crowd at the finish. The strong ground winds gave Capt. Gus Schoeman some trouble and we finally landed on the third attempt. That was a flight I will never forget, as it not only gave me an insight into the early days of commercial airlines, but was a ringside seat to one of the world’s finest aviation events, the S.P. Trophy Air Race.

All the SAA staff that fly or maintain the J U 52 do so in their spare time, and they must be complimented for their dedication. And me, well they can take away my Bop TV, but they can never take away my experience of flying in that grand old dame, the one I now call “Beautiful Betty”!

1984 State President’s Air Race

Held at Bethlehem Airfield – 1 to 2 June 1984

By Dietlind Lempp

EVEN THE SLOWEST GET THERE EVENTUALLY!

Our official entry form for the State President’s Trophy Air Race 1984 looked a little bit strange, to say the least. Aircraft: Motor Glider Grob G109B ZS-VAB; Pilot: Brian Arton, hours on type: nil; Navigator: Dietlind Lempp, hours on type: 15. The Grob was the boss’ newest toy, one of only a few in the country, and the same boss had, on the evening before the race, ordered Brian and myself to enter. The Handicapping Committee, usually called “the people who everybody loves to hate”, didn’t really know what to do with us and had given us a handicap of 104 knots, which made us the slowest aircraft in the race and was still quite a few knots faster than we ever hoped to be.

Bethlehem AirfieldAnyway, after we had put our beautiful little motor glider with the long white wings on (Brian reckoned you don’t strap yourself in, this one you put on) we taxied out to the starting point, right through the dust of 72 other aircraft, who had taken off before us. Brian got the quickestconversion in history; this was probably also the first time in the history of the race where the pilot was pattered through the take-off. Shortly afterwards we had a small fight in the cockpit: wanted to get the prop into coarse pitch (airspeed 65 knots, rpm 2300, pull pitch control once) and Brian did not want to slow down to perform this silly “gear-change”. I won, and soon we were happily cruising along a couple of feet above the grass. This being my first introduction to crop spraying type operations I nervously called out every power-line, telephone wire or tree I saw looming up ahead of us, but Brian seemed to be quite used to this type of thing and I soon settled down with my maps. No ADF or VOR, no gyro, no DI in this aircraft; our maps were the only thing to rely on.

The leg to Vryheid was quite uneventful, except for a big “thump” all of a sudden: a little bird seemed to have committed suicide somewhere. I quickly released my harness (strapped in you can hardly scratch your right ear with your left hand) and turned around. After having established that both wings and the tail plane were still where they were supposed to be, all was well again. We made use of ground effect and also had the benefit of quite a bit of convective lift from some of the fields, and by the time we got to Vryheid we were quite happy with our groundspeed.

Vryheid to Ermelo was a different matter; we had to climb some mountains, which at an indicated speed of somewhere between 70 and 80 knots was not exactly a great pleasure. We also weren’t very happy about the comments of the spotters at Ermelo, which ranged from “Welcome, speedy” to “See you on the way home”. The latter they did and even had the cheek to wave to us, big deal when you fly a Cardinal! On this final leg to Bethlehem we struggled against a headwind, but it was good fun to observe the dassies dashing for cover (and a peasant woman walking on the fields as well). Once Brian went temporarily IF as I refolded my map, the Grob cockpit is not exactly designed to spread out three sheets of 1 : 250 000 charts.

Finally, we gloriously crossed the finish-line, only about 12 minutes late. On final there was again some confusion in the cockpit as I tried to get Brian to perform all sorts of tasks which he thought to be a bit silly. For an experienced crop-sprayer usually flying turbine powered brutes it was indeed strange to change gears and approach high and close the throttle and change hands and regulate his descent with the spoilers and approach at 62 knots and pull the spoilers out a bit more after the wheels touched. Brian crowned the confusion with an excellent landing! As we taxied in the homebuilt Condor UIM crossed the finish-line – and he had taken off just before us. We weren’t the slowest aircraft in the race after all!

At the fuel pumps we proudly signed the slip for 72 litres of Avgas, which compared favourably with the 45 litres OIL which Ret Orsmond (the boss) had used in the Bullthrush!

Day two saw us taking off first. Again we fought along at an average altitude of about 30 feet AGL. The topocadastral 1 : 250 000 brought some surprises, on the map everything was blue, on the ground it was brownish-grey. Geneva turned out not to be Geneva, but finally we were back on track. Then they started overtaking us, all those “fast” aircraft: the Cherokee 140s first, then the Cessna 172s. After Schweizer-Reneke the larger Cessnas zoomed past, then the Bonanzas and Mooneys and finally the Barons and our boss in the Bullthrush. Coming into Bultfontein, dead on track, a Mooney was overtaking us on our left, cutting in front to pass the turning point on the right hand side. We had some interesting moments, and I had my eyes more outside the cockpit on other aircraft than on ground-features and my map.

On the evening of the first day our faithful ground crew had laborious replaced the aileron tapes to seal the gap between wing and aileron and make our little Grob faster. Those tapes now had decided to go their own way, at least partly. They were, half on, half off, trailing as long white streamers behind the wings, causing the most unwanted thing in any air-racers life: draaaaaaaag!

We scraped along the boundary fence of Willem Pretorius Game Reserve because of Air Nav Regs and minimum heights over game parks and all that. Then some nasty soul put some mountains right on our track, which we took on the upwind side, hoping for ridge lift. But the air was absolutely
stable and we had to rely solely on the 87 horses provided by our 2.5 litre converted Volkswagen engine.

Again we crossed the finish-line, with six or seven aircraft, including a Baron, coming in behind us. Our faithful ground-crew awaited us with beers, three cheers to them. They were a bit apprehensive when they saw the long streamers trailing from the wings and thought for a moment that we had interrupted some poor farmer’s means of communication with the outside world.

We had completed the 727 nm course over the two days in a total of 7 hours and 31 minutes, which worked out to be an average ground speed of 96.6 knots. For this we had used 150 litres of fuel or exactly 20 litres per hour, flying at full throttle from the moment the starter dropped his flag to the minute we crossed the finish line.

All in all, both Brian and I enjoyed the race tremendously. It was good fun, even though we did fly the slowest aircraft in the race. The Vickers Trophy (for the people who tried the hardest?) beautifies Brian’s untidy desk and reminds us of a very enjoyable weekend.

1984 State President’s Air Race

Held at Bethlehem Airfield – 1 to 2 June 1984

Trophies

1980 State President’s Trophy Air Race

Pietermaritzburg to Ermelo, 30 to 31 May 1980.

HISTORIC WIN FOR WOMEN

Maureen and Juliette triumph in 1980 State President’s Air Race

By Godfrey King

The 1980 State President’s Air Race, held over the Republic Day weekend, saw a historic finish with an all-female team coming in ahead of the field for the first time. Pilot Maureen Forrester, and navigator Juliette Serrurier, both of Johannesburg, were several minutes ahead of the second-placed aircraft – and 27 minutes and 35 seconds ahead of handicap – in their Beechcraft Sundowner at Ermelo’s aerodrome on May 31.

For Maureen it was a particular triumph, as last year she was pipped at the post to lose the trophy by only 14 seconds.

In 1979 Maureen had Jeanette Fraser-Jones as her navigator, and, when Jeanette was unable to team up with Maureen again for the 1980 race, Juliette stepped in as a last-minute replacement. The couple had never flown together before, but that did not deter them from showing the men a clean pair of heels.
The race started at Pietermaritzburg on May 30, with competitors flying to Vanderbijlpark via Mkuze, Zululand. Then they flew to Ellisras and on to Ermelo, which had been chosen for the finish as the town was celebrating its centenary.

“Our flight went very well,” said a jubilant Maureen. “Juliette kept us on track and we were never more than a few miles off course.” “We had a fantastic tail wind of 30 knots and at Mkuze we were nine minutes ahead of our handicap. At Vanderbijlpark we were 20 minutes ahead of handicap.”

Maureen said they were unaware of their position at the finish because they had been tuned in to the wrong frequency. “It was only when we climbed out of the aircraft that we heard that we were first.”
Although Juliette is actively connected with aviation – she is a member of the Beechcraft Sales team at Rand Airport – Maureen only took up flying three years ago . . . and then it was only because of an argument she had had with her husband, Nigel, the winning navigator in the 1978 State President’s Air race.

A housewife and mother of two boys aged seven and eight, Maureen explained that she had told Nigel that there should be more women in the race. “But Nigel, being the male chauvinist that he is, said I was just a dumb housewife and that women, anyway, only fooled around in the air,” she said.
“I wanted to prove to him that he was wrong – and I went solo after only nine-and-a-half hours. But when I obtained my licence he said, ‘Any monkey can fly’ so I was doubly determined to beat him”. And beat him she did.

For the past two years Nigel has had to eat humble pie, trailing his wife – who only has about 150 hours of flying experience as one of the “also ran’s”. This year, navigating a Beechcraft Baron with Graeme Conlyn as pilot, Nigel could only manage 15th position.

In 1978 the Graeme Conlyn/Nigel Forrester team won the event. Last year’s winners, Allan Hodgson and his father Cecil, could only come 47th this year.

Not only did Maureen and Juliette capture the State President’s trophy, but they also collected the Wakefield trophy for the first female pilot home; the Hoofstad trophy for the first Transvaal aircraft home; and the Beech trophy for the first Beechcraft home.

After the race, Maureen paid full tribute to Juliette’s help – “she was fantastic and kept telling me to relax” – and said she thought it had been a very well organised race.

Maureen, whose main pastimes are tennis and bridge, aims to “have a go at the race again, next year.” She wants to accomplish a hat-trick, she says.

Somewhat overshadowed by the women was Mr. Matthys de Wet, of Mooinooi in the Transvaal, who came second in his Piper Tomahawk. It was a notable achievement nonetheless – for he flew solo without a navigator. Last year he also flew solo, winning the Handicapper’s Trophy for his sterling effort.
Although one aircraft blew a tyre on landing at Ermelo, there were no major mishaps during the race. The trophy for the fastest time – 224,9 knots – was won by W.A. Burgener (pilot) and K.D. Heinemann (navigator) in an Aerostar. The Vickers trophy for the most meritorious performance was won by W.H. Barnard (pilot), and A.D. du Plessis (navigator) in a Baron.

1980 State President’s Trophy Air Race

Pietermaritzburg to Ermelo – 30 to 31 May 1980