PMB Air Nav Rally

Air Navigation Racing in Brisbane

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2nd FAI World Air Navigation Race Championship Santa Cruz

By Willie Bodenstein. Photos by Barbara Freibose and Jonty Esser

Air navigation racing is a relatively new aviation sport, with this year’s championship being only the second world championships. This year’s competition was organized by the Aeroclube Torres Vedras on behalf of the FAI and in cooperation with the Portuguese General Aviation Commission FPA (Portuguese Aeronautic Federation).The opening ceremony featured the F-16s of the Portuguese Air Force as well as Yaks, Pitts and others. 
Santa Cruz Airfield (ICAO: LPSC) is located 60 km North of Lisbon, 15 Km of Torres Vedras City, just a few meters from the beach and village of Santa Cruz.

The World Air Navigation Race (WANR) is a knock-out competition where teams representing their respective countries fly in elimination heats against each other. Precision flying, navigation and landings define this competition. The pilots have to fly along predetermined narrow corridors with irregular shapes at a specific speed. No GPS or other navigation assistance allowed. Teams are only allowed to use a compass, clock and map. All aircraft must enter and exit the corridors at an exactly predetermined time and at the end, must land without engine thrust from downwind in a one-meter box marked on the runway, for no penalties. Crews are penalised for flying outside their corridors and for timing errors. Penalties are also awarded for the landing.

Forty-three crews from seventeen countries entered the competition that started on the 5th of September and concluded on 13the with a gala prize giving dinner held at the Quinta da Almiara Winery ten minutes from Torres Verdas.Five teams from South Africa entered. 
Thys van der Merwe and Mary de Klerk 

Mauritz du Plessis and Sandi Goddard

Hans Schwebel and Ron Stirk

Jonty and Eugene Esser

Anthony and Pamela Russel

The weather throughout most of the championships boasted blustery winds, typical to coastal regions, but was not what the teams from South Africa were used too, as were the maps that they were issued for planning purposes. However, after the practice days, during which approximately 200 training flights were flown in which all competitors had the opportunity to practice navigation routes and precision landings, they were confident that they would do well.

Day one of the championships started with an early morning briefing as did all the other days.

Crews are handed their map with the printed corridor and are only given thirty minutes to plan their flight.

A typical daily task map.

Competitors have to fly along predetermined corridors with irregular shapes at a specific speed (normally 80 knots). The corridors are generated by sophisticated mapping software to ensure they are of equal length.

 

 
The South Africans hard at work planning their flights. 

Since aircraft was shared not only between the SA team members but also with members of the teams of other countries, start times were staggered to make provision for this.   
Images taken from the big screen of some of the tracks being flown.

GNSS loggers are used to log the flight track which provides accurate timing to the second. All flights could be tacked live and this brought a new dimension to the sport of air navigation races. In South Africa fellow racers and others were glued to their phones watching the races live.
The final day’s map showing the corridors in the shape of an aircraft that competitors had to fly in. 

Brits ANR (Air Navigation race) Nationals Championships – 25 to 27 July 2019  by Rob Jonkers

The South African Power Flying Association (SAPFA) held a very successful ANR (Air Navigation Race) Nationals Championships at Brits Airfield, spanning 3 days from 25^th to 27^th July 2019. This event was the qualifier event for selecting the National team to represent South Africa at the World ANR Championships to be held at Santa Cruz Beach Airfield in Portugal from the 5^th to 14^th September 2019.

This newest form of power flying sport, still needs to take on here in SA, but with so much going on in the Rally arena in preparation for our 2020 World Championships, the ANR has taken a slight backseat, the last event was held in 2017. This meant that most participants were somewhat rusty in this type of event. Thus in the run up to the Nationals, many teams were practicing in prior weeks some old routes and some practice routes.

For this event, it was planned to be held over 3 days, with Thursday being a practice day, with Friday & Saturday the Nationals days. The weather outlook being winter promised to be good, with the usual winter inversion layers and early morning fog, and essentially pristine wind conditions, except for Saturday which had morning fog in the Johannesburg region delaying some teams to arrive, and where the wind picked up somewhat.

The Track shown of Route 3 – an anti-clockwise route

For this ANR, Rob Jonkers took up the role of Competition Director, with still unfamiliar finicky scoring software, which proved daunting with the second route, but eventually solved.

There were 11 crews taking part over the 3 days, with 5 Protea team aspirants to qualify for the team to represent SA at the World’s. There were 6 Sportsman or fun teams, most first timers to compete in an ANR event. For Thursday, Jonty Esser provided 4 practice routes, thus the teams had the benefit of practicing how to prepare the map, and fly the routes to assess how well they could maintain their track inside the navigation corridor.

In an ANR, there are only two objectives, the first being on-time at the start and finish gates, each second early or late attracts 3 penalty points. The second objective is to remain inside the corridor which in this case is 0.4 nm wide (+/- 800 m), any excursion outside the corridor also attracts 3 penalty points per second being outside the corridor.

 Competition Director Rob Jonkers briefing the teams on Saturday Morning

For this competition there were four routes to be flown, each at around 25 nm, so the course takes around 20 minutes to complete, which is nice and short but given the amount of concentration and focus required to stay within bounds, a very daunting contest. The navigator has the unenviable task of keeping the pilot on the straight and narrow, and the pilot has to keeping checking that the navigator is doing his job…. Two routes were flown on Friday and the other two on Saturday.

Team Pieter du Plessis & Hendrik Loots Plotting

Team Karen Purchase & Leon Bouttell Plotting

Team Tony & Pam Russell Plotting

The courses all had 10 legs (with the exception of route 3 with 11), which meant that on average the legs were around 1 min to 1.5 min in length, making flying these short legs quite daunting, as one is hardly on a leg when you have to think about turning onto the next leg, and keep track of the time.

The competing aircraft

First off was Jonty and Johnathon Esser in a C150 at 10h15 followed by the rest of the field in 5 minute intervals, some longer if there were aircraft being used twice by different crews. The next round started at 12H30, with the last crews in by 14h00. Then the big task of logger downloads, analyzing and printing results, which for route 2 was complicated by a software hitch, which was eventually solved.

 The teams of competitors

For route 1, Shane Britz and Karen Stroud had the best result with 393 penalties, and for route 2 Jonty & Jonathan Esser with 72 penalties. It was very apparent that if you make a mistake, to recover from it is proven to be quite difficult. In the later afternoon, a landing competition was held, with a barrier landing and a glide approach landing, the winner of this was Hans Schwebel with a score of 44 points.

Adrienne Visser & Piet Meyer plotting

For route 3, Tony & Pam Russell aced it with 15 penalties, which were for timing at the end point, with no corridor excursions, and for route 4 Rob Jonkers and Martin Meyer with 99 penalties, although as Competition Director and having plotted the route a few days ago probably had a little bit of an unfair advantage…..

Ron Stirk & Hans Schwebel having received papers in the plotting area

Thys vd Merwe and Mary de Klerk plotting on practice day

Overall, for the 4 combined routes, Jonty & Jonathan Esser came in 1^st place, and with the landings combined, the overall ANR champions were Thys vd Merwe & Mary de Klerk, followed by Jonty & Jonathan Esser in 2^nd place, with Tony & Pam Russell in 3^rd place.

Winning Landing in C150 ZS-NBT with Hans Schwebel & Ron Stirk

 Shane Britz & Karen Stroud busy plotting

In the Sportsmans class, Leon Bouttell & Karen Purchase took 1^st place, Shane Britz & Karen Stroud in 2^nd place, Hendrik Loots & Pieter du Plessis in 3^rd place.

Winning track of the Competition of Tony & Pam Russell

One of the tracks that went a bit pear shaped

The Google Earth Live track screen, the yellow track being the best of the day for route 4, and the red and green tracks with some wandering around the course up in the north end of the course

This event was for sure enjoyed by all, with the Nationals participants having made the cut-off of 20% of max score, and have been selected to represent South Africa at the World Championship this year in Portugal.

The Nationals Team selected to represent South Africa at the Worlds ANR event in Santa Cruz Beach, Portugal in September 2019

View from a Novice to ANR – Piet Meyer

My navigator and I have been taking part in the SAPFA Speed Rally championship and browsing through the events calendar, noticed the ANR National and just entered having no idea what it entailed. We were under the impression it is just another Nav or Speed Rally. Later when asking the start times etc. we realized that this is no easy and fun flight but the actual National championship for teams to qualify for the world championship held in Portugal later this year.

Adrienne Visser and Piet Meyer

The race format is a very tricky route which is to be flown at 80kts in a 0.4nm corridor. Penalties are allocated for time outside the corridor as well as for each second outside of the allocated start and finish time. Seconds count here and an early finish here will end you up in more hot water than an early finish on your wedding day. Part of the competition also includes two spot landings. One glide approach and one power landing over an obstacle. The Thursday 4 practise routes were flown with two official routes on Friday followed by the spot landings. Saturday two routes with prize giving in the afternoon and then the announcement of the teams qualifying for Worlds in Portugal.

We entered as Sportsman class just to compete and see how we stacked up against the Professionals. Having never done this type of race before we were nervous on Thursday and did the first practice run. Total mess as we missed the first turn and with legs being anything from 45 seconds to 2 minutes, a small mistake can cost you hundreds of points. Here the crew with the least points win. Getting some tips from the professionals, we did the second route and did better. Stayed in the corridor for most of the route. Third and fourth went even better. Our scores ranging from 1200 to 1700. I mentioned to my navigator that “we did not do too bad?” after she repeatedly had to say, turn, watch your speed, stay on track. I got that look from her with the smile that I give parents with new-born babies while saying “What a beautiful baby” although you hope for their sake that the little rat will turn into a human someday. The response from Adrienne “Not too bad. We can do better” ….smile…. One of the routes we scored just over 700 points so we were getting better. The top pilots scored under 100 for some of the routes with Jonty Esser and his son with a score of 23 in one of the routes.

Friday and Saturday, each team is allocated a take-off time, start and finish time. The routes are handed out 45 minutes before your allotted start time. You are given 30minutes to plot the route, 10 minutes to go to the plane and get to the runway for take-off. Then 5 minutes to get to the start and then cross the start on the exact time. Only maps and compass to be used so no GPS, cell phone, Fitbit, or anything allowed. For newbie pilots or those who are getting bored with the cabbage patch flying or the coffee at Zebula, challenge yourself to one of these events. Your skills as a pilot and navigator is greatly increased. My confidence in my flying as well as my aircraft grew more in this one weekend than in the hundreds of hours flying to go get a coffee. When I started flying and saw the articles of these championships and the guys with Protea colours, I always thought that this is way out of our league. I did not want to make a fool of myself amongst these flying gods of whom you read and always watch in awe from a distance. Even though it is a Nationals Championship, the atmosphere is relaxed. Pilots talk, help each other and give tips to us newbies. Everything is well organized with Rob Jonkers doing the official part of downloading loggers and working out scores. Brits Flying club did well in having coffee and food available and a nice fire in the clubhouse to keep all nice and warm in the morning.

Well done to SAPFA and all the guys involved to make this event possible. As a newbie to the sport, I can highly recommend all to try these events. It is not as intimidating as it looks and the knowledge you gain is priceless. Thanks to all for a great weekend and thanks to my navigator who is after everything still flies with me. So, all the weekend warriors, cabbage patch flyers and other flying professionals, dust of those maps, switch off the GPS and come join these SAPFA events. I must warn you however, it is very addictive and you will more likely be able to kick a Heroin addiction but this flying racing habit will stick and there is no cure. We are counting the days to the next event.