Articles Rally (Page 38)

1986 NAC Eastern Province Precision Air Rally

Port Elizabeth – 30 August 1986

by Les Sephton, Chairman – Power Flying

Roy Waldek organised and ran a most efficient rally at Port Elizabeth on the 30th August 1986. Thirty three (33) aircraft entered with many entrants coming from Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, East London and Bloemfontein, besides those from Port Elizabeth. Very heavy rains throughout South Africa prevented nine arriving at Port Elizabeth as they were all earth bound, but those 24 who did compete thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

The rally was flown in windy conditions with clear skies but very turbulent and those pilots who arrived the night before and over imbibed paid heavy a penalty that day more especially did the Navigators. Roy Waldek’s survival kit with food, cooldrinks and headache pills saved many a navigator on the return leg.

Pilots were given their maps, clues etc 45 minutes before aircraft took off and as there were ten cheek points plus five secret check points, as well as ten photographs and ground markers to identify, lead to a marked degree of pressure being placed upon pilot and more especially navigators, prior to and during the rally. Every check point was marked which is an essential aspect of a rally, as there is nothing more satisfying than arriving over a check-point and finding a ground marker plus marshals acknowledging that one has finally made that part of the leg. Twenty-eight ground marshals assisted Roy. There were timed turns on three of the check points adding a further amount of pressure to the pilot.

The first four places went to the following, namely:-

• First – Dave Perelson and his wife Ivanhoe
• Second – John Adams and Colin Jordaan
• Third – Ian MacJanet and Murray Wrench
• Fourth – Dr Steyn and Mr Grotepas

First prize – R500,00; Second – R300,00 and Third – R200,00.

In addition, Budget supplied transport, Bowring Barclays Bank supplied the miniature trophies which were awarded to successful crews and Shell the caps plus Fidelity Bank supplied engraved pens.

Our thanks go to those sponsors who made this rally the success it was.

In addition NAC Port Elizabeth supplied reduced fuel and service charge to competitors.

I am sure I can state on behalf of all the pilots and navigators who competed that we thoroughly enjoyed this rally which can serve as a standard by which other rallies can be measured.

1986 Transvaal Navigation Rally

Grand Central Airport – ?? January 1986

By Renier Moolman

What a Team! What a win! John Adams and Colin Jordaan scored a hands down victory by walking off with all the prizes in the Transvaal Navigation Rally held recently.

This was flown over a course of 255 nautical miles from Grand Central Airport.

Placed second was Dave Perelson and Malcolm Spence, from Algoa Flying Club in Port Elizabeth, followed by Barry de Groot and Barry Hall of the Aucor Flying Team from Pietermaritzburg.

The IRA Team taking part for the first time, scored their first team point with Tom Culver and Mike Winter taking fourth place overall.

The Aucor Team from Pietermaritzburg is the force of the future. A team that is fast becoming one of the best in South Africa. This was proven when Dave Mostert and Martin Hatfield took fifth place overall to once again be points scorers.

The rally was organised by well known airline pilot, sport aviation pilot and acrobatic instructor – Dennis Spence.

The entire route was carefully planned, flown and photographed by Dennis and his team from the Air Force Base at Swartkops, namely Dave Jackson and Keith Fryer. With this all done it was back to the drawing board and two more pilots from Swartkops – Pete Militz and Divvie Duvenhage were called in to help draw the morning and afternoon’s curved track in with painstaking accuracy onto the maps, which were supplied to the navigators for the rally.

Meantime, Dennis composed a concerto on his Hulett Packard mini-computer and all was set and ready for the day.

Thanks to Don Mackenzie, the Chairman of SAFE for kindly organising his members to do the marshalling during the rally. These guys attended the briefing and on the day of the rally, they did a splendid job under the hawk- eye of Trevor Miller.

The morning of the rally, the entire Highveld area was clouded in. Phone calls criss-crossed and pilots stranded on neighbouring airfield were given extra time and the opportunity to hedgehop over to Grand Central. Panic stations were sorted out in a jiffy thanks to Dennis’ Hulett Packard, as all take-off and overhead times had to be adjusted to the new take-off times.

After pilots’ briefing on the morning of the rally, all the guys were treated by “tannic Tess” to tea and “tekkie-buns”. With nerves running havoc, and Alan Blain from Aeronews conducting an interview here, taking a snapshot or two there, the planes took off with three-minute intervals, heading straight over the tower at Lanseria, which incidently was a secret checkpoint.

Placo Rand kindly 1oaned us a Cherokee-Six to ferry our marshalls to all the various checkpoints. The Six was skippered by Dave Jackson from 41-Squadron. Leaving the departing of the aircraft in the capable hands of Charles and Marie Wotherspoon, Dennis and I strapped on his newly finished Smirnoff Vodka Pitts 52A.

So we inverted out of Grand Central, winged-over Lanseria, looped into Rustenburg airfield and rolled to a neat halt in front of the clubhouse, much to the delight of the spectators. Dennis and I had hardly unstrapped the Pitts, when we heard Springbok Chris Kyle and Peter Lastrucci in EAD call ETA overhead – two minutes.

Soon all the planes started crowding the circuit to approach for the landings contest.

John Adams flying his old faithful Mooney Ranger (FHM), scored the best landing of the day with a total of eight penalty points. What was interesting was that the first place overall in the landings competition, was a draw between Kevin Caldwell (JTA) and Glen Dell with total penalties for the day of 30 each. The judges ruling was that because Kevin was the lesser experienced pilot and because his afternoon landing was an improvement on that of the morning, he was awarded the first prize.

Third place overall in the landings was taken by Peter Lastrucci from Krugersdorp in C-172 EAD and Dave Mostert was fourth in his Mooney (LHE). Rod Ackerman in KFF, a 161 Warrior was fifth overall.

Well of the promised sous-tannies, koekbroers and moerkoffie, little was seen at Rustenburg airfield for lunch. A sincere thanks to the organising committee who instead treated us to cold meats, salads and cold drinks.

After lunch, the real action began as this was the leg of the rally that was to sort the men from the boys!

Five minutes before Time, navigators were given their packages containing info, maps and photographs of the curved S-track from Rustenburg to the windsock at Krugersdorp Jack Taylor Aerodrome, where Jack himself and Charles Wotherspoon were there to see the chaps over the finish line.

On finishing over the windsock, the aeries were allowed to idle back to Lanseria for the final landing competition. Well, as I said, the curved track seemed to be a little tough for some guys; so, even if they cannot be given any points for following Dennis’ painstakingly accurately drawn track, I have to give them eleven out of ten for initiative for the checkpoints they created.

By the way, some entries decided along the way that the route home is straight and shorter than to the finish line, resulting in the judges at the finish point still waiting to clock them overhead – 1986 calender in hand.

With all the participants safely home, the pilots, navigators, wives, girlfriends, mistresses, casual acquaintances etc. etc. were treated to “horse- on-the-spit”, some fine paraphernalia, liquid sandwiches and-all.

So a thousand calculations, multiplications, malfunctions, and so forth later, it was time for jubilations, indignations, I-told-you-so’s and one admirer even suffered a mild attack of Vitas Gerulaitas.

Well time for me to fly-goodbye, and to leave you with this thought. Although flying is becoming a very expensive sport, there can still be only one winner, but without you and you, taking part there won’t be any winners, so go and learn from this experience, and you too, will become a winner. C’est La Vie

Eastern Cape Settlers Rally

Held in Port Elizabeth – 23 August 1985

By B B Perkins

The Eastern Cape Round of the National Rally Championships was held in Port Elizabeth on 23 August 1985. Called the Settlers Rally this years event was hosted by the Algoa Flying Club at H.F. Verwoerd airport. A tremendous amount of work was put in by the Algoa Flying Club in organizing this event and it must have pleased them to receive a record entry of 25 aircraft. However, chief rally organizers Roy Waldek and ‘Budgie’ Burgers nearly saw their worst nightmare come true when the morning of the event arrived with seven eights low cloud and buckets of rain.

It was decided to push the starting time back by thirty minutes to see if the weather would improve. Although the starting point of the rally was still clampers, Verwoerd was manageable and the other checkpoints were either CAVOK or high cloud. It was decided to go ahead but to change the starting, point to the first turning point. With nervous excitement in the air the navigators started collecting their gen. This consisted of two topocatostrophe (topographical) maps, instructions, 8 photographs, a gift and a survival pack (more about that later).

The route covered a distance of approximately 250 nm which was. accurately drawn onto the maps supplied. About 60 nm of the route was curved and included outside and inverse track. Three of the eight photographs were along this curved section as well as three secret check points so accuracy here was as essential as ever. Actually, it is worth mentioning the photographs here. These were all pinpoint photographs and varied from a shot of a conspicuously shaped dam to a mind boggeling photograph of a gravel road T-junction that looked so similiar to a thousand others that you had to be alert, on track and eyeballs down to recognize it. Another of the photographs was of a farm house, which if you weren’t accurately on track, would be hidden behind large trees. And yes – the top teams did spot these.

The Rally included sixteen check-points, seven of them at turning points, seven were secret checkpoints and one each at the start and finish. These were manned by members of the Port Elizabeth Radio Hams Society as well as members of the Grahamstown Radio Hams society. The route overflew some of the scenic areas of the Eastern Cape including Uitenhage, Port Alfred, Grahamstown, Redhouse and the Port Elizabeth coastline. All the information from the checkpoints was radio’ed through to Rally control at Verwoerd where it was plotted on a board and then transferred to an Apple mini-computer for calculation. In fact a special programme was developed for the rally where competitors received a printout of ETA’s with their instruction gen. These ETA’s were then compared to the ATA’s in order to generate the result.

Oh yes, about the survival packs. These were a neat touch instituted by Roy Waldek and consisted of a generous helping of biltong, a couple of biscuits and asprins. Since Roy was the one who designed the rally route I reckon he knew he would be giving the crews a headache, hence the asprins.

That night, at the well supported prize-giving, the Pietermaritzburg Flying club delivered a message from the Mayor of Pietermaritzburg to the Deputy Mayor of PE. They also presented the Algoa Flying Club with a splendid floating trophy that they requested be awarded to the most deserving club member on an annual basis. And then it was time for the rally results. These were read from the last place upwards by ‘Budgie’ Burgers and each scoresheet was handed over with personal words of congratulations, encouragement or just plain leg pulling.

At position number six the handing out of the prizes was taken over by the Honourable life president of the Algoa Flying Club, Captain Nick Louden-Carter. Positions one to six all received cups with second place receiving R400 as well. First place received the beautiful floating trophy, a miniatures of the cup and Rl 000 in cash. Money for these prizes were donated by club members.

Congratulations to Malcolm Spence and Dave Perelson for their outstanding display of accurate flying. Their total of 218 penalty points was less than half that of second placed D Mostert and M Hatfieid who had won the previous provincial in the OFS.

Special mention – Well, Robert Pokorney and Peter van der Velden had to do a forced landing on the Uitenhage Freeway directly after completing the rally due to fuel problems. No damage to plane or pilot was sustained. At the prize giving they were presented with two bottles of vinyl seat cleaner which were deemed necessary after their harrowing experience.

Everyone I spoke to after the rally were very impressed with the running of the event and congratulations must go to the Algoa Flying Club for the very professional manner in which the event was run. Of the first six places two were from Port Elizabeth one from Jansenville and three from Pietermartizburg so it looks like there was little benefit derived from flying over ones home territory. All in all this was a very good rally that was enjoyed by everyone.