EASTERN PROVINCE INTER–PROVINCIAL

EASTERN PROVINCE INTER–PROVINCIAL
PRECISION FLYING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Port Elizabeth – 11 March 2000

During the week up to the competition day, PE had lots of rain with the last rain falling on the Friday morning as I arrived there. Saturday was one of those perfect mornings that you can only get at places like PE and we had a field of 13 competitors ready to roll at Progress airfield.

EP Precision Flying Winner 2000 - Hans Schwebel
Overall Winner – Hans Schwebel

Dave Perelson’s experience as a competitor showed with a very well thought out route with seven legs and an away start to complicate matters. The route distance was about 75NM. Miss the start and you can just as well go home. Most of us came back from the navex, confident that we found most of the secrets – not to be. Dave has put 3 secrets in villages and they were in positions where it was not only difficult to spot them due to the ‘busy’ environment, but also where you would not expect them. Another problem obviously was that it was difficult to fly your time accurately at these secrets. With a total of 10 timing points (6 secrets) the results reflected your real performance and took luck out of the equation. Isn’t this what Precision flying is all about – on track, on time, all the time.

By the time we were ready to do the landings, we had a wind of 20–25 Knots more or less down runway 25. Not finished with us, Dave decided that we should do 4 landings namely: 1) Power with flaps, 2) Glide with flaps, 3) Glide without flaps and 4) Obstacle landing. By the time the second group was airborne, low cloud came in and we had to do the glides from 800ft instead of the usual 1000ft.

In the navigation part of the competition, James Craven did the best with a total of 196 penalties followed by Hans Schwebel (313) , Jan Hanekom (387), Russell Phillips (695), Frikkie Lubbe (1181) and A van Vuuren (1445) in the Open Class.

In the Sportsman Class we had R Hickman first (1139), followed by O Akerlund (1354), C Gerard (1602), A Taljaard (2084), D Renwick (2305), C du Plessis (2965) and J Saveur (3292).

EP Precision Flying Sportsmans Class - 2000 Gerard, Hickman & Akerland
First Three in the Sportsman Class

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Three in the Sportsman Class

The landing competition was won by Russell Phillips, closely followed by Jan Hanekom and Hans Schwebel with only 7 penalties between separating them. The penalties 33, 35 and 40 respectively for the four landings combined.

Overall Result – Open Class

  • 1 H Schwebel 353
  • 2 J Craven 383
  • 3 J Hanekom 422
  • 4 R Phillips 728
  • 5 F Lubbe 1492
  • 6 A van Vuuren 1827

Overall Result – Sportsman Class

  • 1 R Hickman 1469
  • 2 O Akerlund 1736
  • 3 C Gerard 1958
  • 4 A Taljaard 2501
  • 5 D Renwick 3195
  • 6 C du Plessis 3446
  • 7 J Sauveur 3784

I would like to thank all the competitors for their participation and hope to see everyone at the forthcoming events. A big thank you to Dave Perelson and is able team of marshals without whom we could not have the event. Last but not least, thanks to Algoa Flying Club and John and Mandy English of Progress for offering their facilities. It is indeed appreciated by everyone.