Articles Rally (Page 15)

by Rob Jonkers (photos by Willie Bodenstein)

The South African Power Flying Association (SAPFA) together with the Krugersdorp Flying Club organised an extremely successful Navigation Fun Rally on Saturday 15th October 2016. Under the Stewardship of SAPFA’s Frank Eckard who planned & plotted the course, a total of 12 entrants were able to partake in the fun rally.

There was one further entrant in the Precision Rally Mauritz du Plessis all the way from the Cape who was flying this format as a qualifying competition rally for the Precisions Nationals being held in March 2017.

This rally was originally scheduled for March, but was completely rained and fogged out, thus had to happen later in the year, October normally being a good weather month option, but with the whacky weather of late, it appears the hot dry winds of August came two months later. And so the challenging weather did not disappoint, with increasing wind from the north getting stronger by the hour, peaking around 2 pm with 15 to 20 kts crosswind on the runway, with Krugersdorp’s runway particularly exposed to the elements. This reduced the field of entrants somewhat, as some teams indicated their crosswind limits out of their comfortable range, and as we know Pilot’s discretion rules.

The rally briefing started juts before 8 am with Chris Kyle providing airspace rules and with Frank providing some of the route details, after which breakfast and plotting could start.

 

  

The first aircraft departed around 10 am on a route mostly to the south west, past Westonaria, turning northwest at Carletonville into an area so sparse with virtually no ground features to speak of, making it tough to follow the required ground track.

The Track

In the fun rally rules, each turning point has a 15 second window to cross over to attain zero penalty points with a mile wide gate to go through, and along the route around 13 photographs had to be recognised and located on the map.

 

Pilot’s Post – Krugersdorp Fun Rally 2016

The wind at altitude must have been 25 kts+, making flying accurately very challenging especially on the downwind legs, where flaps had to be deployed and slow flight skills came into play, zig-zagging turns along the course also required being careful not to attract track errors of turning more than 90 deg. Some of the photo recognition also a challenge as google earth pictures are used which look different to the real world, especially with the dry landscape out there, the lack of rain very evident. Returning to Krugersdorp the teams had to cope with the heavy crosswind and turbulence to land, many struggling to keep the aircraft straight along the narrow runway, everybody managed it without any incident.

After all the scores were tallied, the prize-giving ceremony was held in the clubhouse hosted by John Addis, where the first three places and prizes went to Ron & Dusty Stirk in their C150 ZS-IWD who came 1st with a remarkable 43 points.

Rob Jonkers & Marie Reddy in a C182 ZS-IVC who came 2nd with 109 points

Peter & Celia Lastrucci in their C152 ZS-CAT who came 3rd with 270 points.

This event was for sure enjoyed by all, most entrants never having flown a rally before, getting an understanding of flying with more precision, especially in the slower flight regime. Thanks are extended to Grant & Annatjie Rousseau for all the arrangements for the day.

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Secunda Flying Club Fun Rally 2016

By Rob Jonkers and Willie Bodenstein

Source and pictures found at http://www.pilotspost.co.za/arn0001076

Participants

The South African Power Flying Association (SAPFA) together with the Secunda Flying Club organised an extremely successful Navigation Fun Rally on Saturday 1st October 2016.

Jonty Esser and Christoff Le Grange

The Club’s hard work and dedication set the standard for all other rallies to follow. Under the Stewardship of SAPFA’s Jonty Esser who planned & plotted the course and training activities and together with Chistoff le Grange, the club’s Chairman, a total of 21 entrants were able to partake in the rally.

Early morning low level fog

If it were not for the early morning low level fog, there may have been more, as some aircraft had to turn back and wait it out, and some stayed at home. Inevitably, the planned 7 am briefing had to be delayed.

Ricardo de Bonis from Krugersdorp

Mike Brown from Vereeniging…………Karl Jensen from Fly In Estates

Archie Kemp from Vereeniging

The Secunda club invited other clubs in the region to partake as well with a best club prize also up for grabs. A number of EAA Chapter 322 flyers also attended for the scrumptious breakfast laid on by the club.

 

 

Participants getting down to serious business

Jonty arranged for a training session for all those who could attend on the Friday evening, so as to give guidance on how to plot and fly a rally.

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Andre Roos and Gerhard Scheepers, Zenair Zodiac

Johan van Eerden & Cor Esterhuizen, Vans RV7A…Marthinus Kruger & Adriaan Joubert, Cessna 182

H & F Human, Cessna 182

Johan v Niekerk & Frikkie v Heerden, Carl Babst Raven….Gareth Williams & Ahwir Kallie, Bushbaby

Fred & Ruaan Greyling, Cirrus SR22

The first aircraft departed at around 10 am on a route that was mostly to the south towards Standerton area, and past the big Tutuka power station, where the unmistakable big runway was an easy turning point, with other turning points more difficult to spot, especially the dirt road junctions where the mielie fields lying fallow gave little colour contrast against the roads. In the fun rally rules, each turning point has a 15 second window to cross over to attain zero penalty points with a mile wide gate to go through, and along the route around 18 photographs had to be recognised and located on the map.

Harvard Display

At around 11.30 the take-offs were postponed by a half hour to accommodate a short air display by the Harvard display team in a 4-ship configuration in support of the rally onlookers as well as for a public fete a few hundred meters away.

As the second half of the field took to the air, the wind started to pick up from the west, with plenty of turbulence making flying accurately very challenging especially on the downwind legs, where the 20 kt or wind had to be compensated for by zig zagging and flap deployed slow flight configuration, and with one helicopter taking part, am sure they were much more able to slow down than the fixed wings, the fast and slippery Ravin most likely the most difficult to slow down.

Morne Pretorius & Christoff le Grange, Piper PA-28

Leon le Roux & Garth Williams, Sling2…JP Swartz & Jan-Hendrik Jabcobz, Cessna 182

Riaan Kamffer & Jaco Groenewald, Piper PA-28….Hannes van Heerden Bell 206

Bob Cohoe & Johan du Plessis, Citabria

After all the scores were tallied, the prize-giving ceremony was held outside the clubhouse.

The winners were Coetzee van der Merwe and Jantjie Randall finished with 214 penalty points. They unfortunately left before the prize giving ceremony.

Riaan Kamffer & Jaco Groenewald finished second with 421 penalty points

and Johan van Niekerk and Frikkie van Heerden third with 546 penalty points.

The Secunda Flying club walk away with the club prize.

There was only one advanced entry, that of Rob Jonkers and Martin Meyer. In the advanced rules participants are only allowed a 5 second window at each turning point instead of the a 15 second window to cross over to attain zero penalty points in the fun rally section.

Rob Jonkers & Martin Meyer finished with 123 penalty points

The main sponsors were TZO, U Rent, PWG Grain Merchants, Skysprayers Aviation Direct, Secunda Spring Fest and African Pilot.

This event was for sure enjoyed by all, most entrants never having flown a rally before, getting an understanding of flying with more precision, especially in the slower flight regime, as well as getting accuracy in landing within a few metres. We look forward to them organising a rally again next year.

by Rob Jonkers

The World Rally Flying Championship happens every two years and is hosted by one of the participating nations. This year Portugal hosted the 20^th FAI World Rally Flying Championships in the coastal town of Santa Cruz some 50 km north of Lisbon.

 

This year, 52 crews from 18 nations participated, where South Africa was the only Southern Hemisphere team to take part. Team SA was represented by 4 crews in the Advanced Class: Frank & Cally Eckard, Hans Schwebel & Ron Stirk, Thys vd Merwe & Mary de Klerk, Rob Jonkers and Martin Meyer. Arddyn Moolman & Jacques Jacobs were included as International Judges.

Our team’s arrival was Monday the 29^th August.  A full week before the championship, team SA are normally the first to arrive, as we need the most exposure to the European conditions and terrain as well as aircraft familiarization, as we need to hire local aircraft. By Tuesday late morning we had our aircraft allotted, a Spanish C172 EC-KGG and a Portuguese C150 CS-EBD, and could get airborne in the afternoon for a short recce navigation flight.

 

The organisers provided four official practice routes, and these were put to full use in the following days, where we were able to carry out the plot inside the aircraft as one would do in the competition week, giving us a good practice run-up.

 

The Portuguese landscape is essentially divided into two areas, coastal and inland, separated by a mountain range; although this mountain range is small in comparison, only around 2000 ft, it has a big influence on weather conditions and wind between them, with high wind conditions at the coast and less wind inland.

 

There are plenty of wind power turbines on this whole mountain range, and one has to be careful flying downwind behind the mountains where serious turbulence occurs.

Temperatures also varied from the cooler coastal conditions in the lower 20’s to the near 40’s inland, all of this within 100 km.

Before the fog rolled in on Friday afternoon, two of our teams had only flown two routes, and many of the other international teams  who had only arrived on Friday were not able to get in any practice.

Saturday also proved to be a no-flying day, and Sunday as always a no-flying day as the Opening Ceremony had

to take place.

As a compromise the organisers allowed Sunday flying, but the fog remained persistent and only lifted in the late morning, which once clear, aircraft set-off en mass to get in at least one practice route before the airfield closed in again.

Some aircraft could not return as the fog lay over the field in a thick blanket and they had to divert to an airfield 150 km away to wait out the weather. All this Atlantic generated fog was apparently due to a brewing mid Atlantic hurricane known as Gaston which had started to travel northwards – where normally such hurricanes move off westwards towards the Caribbean. Such is life in planning an aviation event where weather gets in the way.

It became a rush to get ready for the opening ceremony and the crowds descending on the airfield.  In the late afternoon the weather improved for some flying displays to take place – fly-pasts of F16’s and a YAK aerobatic display team.

For the competition week, flights are organized into two groups, flights start around 10 am at 3 minute intervals with the last flight taking off around 3pm, and when returning, two spot landings to be done.

Rob & Thys was divided into group one, and Frank and Hans were in group two.  There was a strict procedure of parking aircraft next to the grass runway in take-off sequence where crews were isolated prior to receiving papers, normally between 30-40 minutes before flight.

Crews were also quarantined without access to technology after flying to prevent information from being passed between competitors.

 

With the opening ceremony behind us, Monday the 5^th September was the start of the competition, and the weather was predicted to be good for the rest of the week. And so it was at sunrise on Monday, guess what? –  fog…., and at the 8 am briefing the competition director delayed the start by an hour to 11 am.

Eventually, everybody was off on route Delta, a route mostly going out north remaining west of the mountains with good visibility and wind at least less than 15 kts. There was one fairly tight arc leg to be flown, which had some of the crews drifting off, incurring track errors. At least the end point was a large bridge crossing a river that everybody could home in on.

In the competition with 4 navigation flights, the first day is normally discarded as a practice flight as everybody is still getting used to the environment, and given the results of team SA for this first flight, we sure wanted to have this first flight in the bin.

 

The next day Tuesday was a real good weather day and the teams all got off onto route Alpha, this route again mostly north and west of the mountains, with a horrible arc to be flown over very hilly terrain where towns defined on the map had less definition in real life where one could not discern where the boundaries were easily.

 

Needless to say this was a tough route. Many of the photo recognition pictures were of orange roofed buildings, and guess what, the whole of Portugal consists of orange roofed buildings…, thus locating and recognizing these ground features not simple.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday we woke up to thick fog, and by the look of it was not going to dissipate, thus at the briefing it was decided based on the forecast that only a small 4 hour flying window would be available, thus the competition director made the call that only the Unlimited Class would fly, which left our whole team flying Advanced no opportunity to fly, and bringing into play the Monday Practice flight into the scoring. We took advantage of the foggy day to go out on a sightseeing outing to the Peniche peninsula north of Santa Cruz and visit the castle in the town of Obidos.

Thursday was a clear day at least but the wind was pumping around 20kts, thus the competition director declared a wind compensation factor to the route (applied for wind over 15kts), and we all set off on route Charlie which went out mostly east and across the mountains to the big river flowing to Lisbon.

Taking up compass headings was impossible with this strong wind, so one had to strictly follow map features to keep track, and turbulence in the lee of the mountains was very violent, making concentrating on flying & navigating challenging. In any event this route proved to give our team the best result of all, so I guess we were just getting in the groove of the area.

 

  

With the competition flights done, team SA organized the traditional international drinks evening at the field, making “melk tertjies” shooters with the Germans, Italians, Russians, Norwegians bringing their traditional hooch. Needless to say, good fun was had by all.

Friday was packing up day and the closing ceremony and prize giving held at the Portuguese Air Force Museum in the town of Sintra somewhat south of Santa Cruz. Team SA was awarded 2^nd place in Advanced class for navigation (Germany was 1^st and Russia 3^rd), and also awarded joint 2^nd place for the landing event together with Poland. (Poland also came first).

Our team stars were Frank & Cally Eckard who were placed 8^th in the navigation competition, and Hans Schwebel & Ron Stirk doing us proud in the landings by achieving 2^nd place.

Even with the overall challenging conditions and lack of practice, team SA still managed an excellent result, the best in years. The next event will be held in 2 years’ time in Slovakia.

For those who have adventure in their blood, where you can sit in an airplane ready to go anywhere without a clue where the route will take you, and figure it all out in the air and find your way around with only a map and eye-ball Mk1, then take up the challenge and join the sport of rally flying.

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