Everyone received a commemorative trophy

After all the rushing, it was an immense relief to sit down for the Opening Ceremony and dinner. Our guest of honour, the mayor of Torun seemed to have another function to attend, so the prizegiving portion of the evening came first. This went smoothly and predictably with all the usual (Polish and Czech) names featuring.  Krzysztof Wieczorek won the navigation with a mere 186 points and the overall competition with a total of 305, while Michal Wieczorek won the landing competition with no fewer than four bingoes!

There is a category for team prizes. The way this works is that in each category (navigation and landing) the scores of the best three performers in each team are added, and the teams are placed. So in navigation, South Africa placed 8th overall out of the 15 teams. In landing, however, where we have always been strong, we took the third place, which meant a stroll up to the podium for Barry, Hans and Ron (the three highest placers), and a mad dash to the front of the photography zone for Mary and me. Our boys looked so proud up there! Well done guys!

The venue they selected for the morning, however, was quite a way a way. We were all loaded into a bus. Or rather most of us were loaded, at which point it became clear the rest weren’t fitting. So the half of our team that was in the bus, got out, and Daroish of the Kiwi team joined us, along with quite a few other people. The second bus was an army bus, and the driver basically stamped on the brake like he was marching and someone yelled “Halt”. Other than that, it was pretty much the fun bus, especially on the way back when the rest of the Kiwis defected as well.

A fireplace in the recreated village at Biskupin

We left town by the scenic route. We crossed the bridge over the Wisla River (which two of our hosts told us was the longest bridge in Europe – a fact Google firmly refuses to support) and then headed down a country lane. We then waited about 15 minutes at a level crossing before meanderning through several other back streets and then hitting the open road. Then it was just over another two hours to Biskupen where we were to visit a museum and a recreation of a village from about 1000 BC.

The museum tour guide told us about the types of buildings found in the area both before and after the period when the recreation was set. You probably don’t want to hear about all that here.

Interesting brand name - found in the bathroom at teh restaurant

After the tour, we were taken to a restaurant for lunch. This would be a good opportunity to mention that the buffet dinners each night at the Hotel Filmar and the lunches at the Aeroclub were both absolutely delicious and top notch quality. As to this meal, well it served mostly for contrast.

We then headed back to Torun, with our guides stressing because we were behind time. There was clearly no way we were going to make it to our next venue – the Torun Planetarium – by 3pm. And Marzenna and Anja only stressed more when we found ourselves behind a crashed tractor. We got past that quickly enough, and arrived at the Planetarium where our eager guides rescheduled for 4:30.

I really do mean it about the "mad dash" through Torun

This left us with no time at all to prepare the photo cards and gift bags that had waited – as these things do – for the last minute. So we performed various mad dashes through Torun old town to try to get our shopping done and a good team photo printed before 4:30, and then Mary headed back to the hotel to stick the newly-printed photos onto cards while the rest of us attended the show at the Planetarium. By then, the planned walk back from the Planetarium to the hotel had been scrapped in favour of retaining the army bus. Well done the organizers! Of course, we arrived there with 15 minutes to prepare for the Closing Ceremony, so it was pretty much a necessity.

We then all dashed upstairs, threw ourselves at our smart outfits, threw goodies at the bags, and rushed downstairs for the festivities. But we all got there on time.

Cake: 131 zl
Vodka: 100 zl
Venue: zero zl
Watching the Kiwis (and the rest of the world) sing “Ons vir jou Suid Afrika” with conviction the day before a Test - Priceless

So what was the party about? Mary has been flying for 20 years and so she decided she ought to celebrate. She did this in typical Mary style – at the last minute and better than anyone else.

She approached the catering staff at the airfield (who work HARD at these events, and who have been absolutely brilliant to us for the whole two week stay) and asked about having a cake made. Her only requirement was that it be big enough to go round. The results in the single day available to them were absolutely spectacular. They went all out, made it huge, and decorated it with the SA team’s logo for this championship. It was impressive work!

Mary in the meantime went about the business of letting everyone know she was planning a get-together for after the landings. As usual, they were all keen to come and join the South Africans for a bit of a tension-breaker. So the crowd grew to represent just about everyone in the competition. It was in fact a necessary outlet, I think, given the tension of waiting for the various scores to be tallied. The only non-attendees were the poor judges who were doing the tallying.

As if that wasn’t enough, after the Pomorski ladies brought out the 20 candles, one of the teams added some heavy duty sparklers. Once it was all lit up, Mary was speechless (no, really, she was!) She could do nothing but exclaim about how wonderful it was! And she was quite right.

The storm that had been coming for a while finally arrived during the event, and so the tent was tied shut a bit on the windward side, but it didn’t dampen proceedings. In fact, after such a hot day the rain was welcome, and I was glad to run through it to take the bus driver a slice of cake.

The party thinned when the last bus to the hotel left. I am sure the hotel staff had been wondering why the dinner crowd was so thin. But most of us got there at around 8 and rushed them off their feet as usual. All in all a successful celebration after a very good day.

We have had to pack up and go home (sadly) but there will be a post on the final standings together with a nice pic of South Africa on the podium at the award ceremony.

Okay so the day is over and the results aren’t quite in. As is usual at these competitions, the scores are put up on a screen as the landings take place, but sometimes a red flag is waved indicating the judges will need to review the result. Sometimes there is no red flag, but a marshall brings up an issue at the debriefing, and a result changes anyway. So it’s all up in the air at the moment but this is what we have for the South Africans.

So with various red flags being investigated, and a protest in regarding the power issue, Barry is in 7th position which is a remarkable achievement. Well done! And all strength to Jacques who has been asked to help the Chief Judge with the final adjudications.

All that remains for now is to have the party we are planning, to celebrate Mary’s 20th year flying anniversary. The catering staff of the flying club have baked and decorated a truly amazing cake.

Watch this space for more details. I’ll put up the final results, together with the landing distances.

Now bear in mind I am giving points here, not metres long or short. So for example on his first landing Barry was 1m long, and earned a penalty of 3 points.  The scores as they stand now mean that there are 5 people ahead of Barry, and one on par with him. So he is joint sixth.

Unfortunately, we still have to hear the results of a protest – he has been provisionally penalised for using power on his glide, something we are certain he did not do, so we will be questioning the decision and  hoping for a decision in our favour. In the meantime Barry is uncharacteristically quiet and introspective.

Another exciting episode a bit later on …

This places Barry and Mary in joint 14th place together with 6 other competitors. Not bad going for the first round. We will have to watch and see whose nerve holds through the glides. There is nothing like a bingo against your name to put pressure on for the next landing!

C ompetition Day 2 was more of the same, with a bit more pressure.

Mary and Ron were now on the early shift, with Hans and Barry flying towards the end of the day. Mary arrived at the field and rushed off to check on her aircraft, which had been in having the alternator looked at. The hangar was locked so she paced a bit. Soon enough, the mechanics arrived, and reassured her all was well. The cowling was put back on, she preflighted, and you could see her relaxing.

There was weather expected late in the afternoon, and so it was decided to accelerate proceedings today. Instead of 5 minute gaps between take-offs, the gaps were now 4 minutes. The runways were also switched round because of the change in the wind. However the route itself was comprised of very few, very long legs so everyone was ready early. The breaks between the groups had also been reduced. This was great for the escorts – it kept us on the hop all day with no time to get bored. Shortening the day I think helped the pilots as well. There was more time to relax together as a team before supper.

Mary, as usual. started a trend. When she went out to her plane, she realised she had forgotten her loggers and sent her escort back to fetch them. Throughout the rest of the day no fewer than three other pilots including reigning champion and competition leader Janusz Darocha forgot to take their loggers to their aircraft. All of them picked up the mistake and rectified it, though, so everyone’s route was scored. 

The comments from the field were overwhelmingly that it had been a very tiring route. Even the leaders took strain with more penalties than usual. None of our competitors recalls ever seeing a route with such long legs, and some of the secrets would have been difficult to find unless you were actually IN the woods rather than overhead them. Still, everyone acquitted themselves well, and they are all revved up for the landing component of the competition.

Mary was helping me with some perspective into where South Africa fits on the world map of Precision and Rally flying. Effectively, these things are always won by the Czechs or the Poles. We chatted with Krzysztof Skretowicz about how much training the Poles actually do. These guys have 5 or 6 competitions a year, for which they do two practise and two actual routes. That adds up to 20 or more routes a year, with all the photos and markers that go along with it. In South Africa, we have such a small pool of pilots, and manage maybe two or three events with fewer pictures, fewer secrets, and not much at all in the way of ground markers. We need to increase the interest of young pilots so that there is a reason to do regional championships again. Feel free to sign up!

I had expected a different atmosphere on day 1 of the actual competition. But from the outside at least, it seemed just like any other day. When asked, Ron said that yes, you do feel different on competition day, but it certainly wasn’t showing.

I have got my routine worked out now. Breakfast, bus, set up SA Command Centre in the Tyskie tent, and then blog the previous day until time to go on duty as an Escort (everyone gets roped in to help at these things). The first two competitors are usually in the Flight Planning room by then. So it was yesterday as well.

We travel in on the big bus, not the small SA bus that Hans bought for us. The pilots go off and preflight their aircraft and about an hour after we arrive, they reassemble for the briefing. This includes a weather forecast for the period during which the first group will be flying. There are separate briefings later for the second and third groups. Hans and Barry were still in group 1, as on the training day. They still hovered about anxiously before their Flight Planning slot. To be honest, yes, they might have been showing more nerves than the day before and they might have gone across earlier to hang around outside. Conversely, some of those waiting around for later slots looked quite relaxed.

Escort duty involves, mostly, sitting around in the sun all day. Escorts are needed to take pilots out to preflight as soon as the Flight Planning room opens. They are also needed to take pilots from Flight Planning to their aircraft, and from the aircraft to Debriefing. So there need to be a lot of them, but there are plenty of quiet spells. I used the opportunity to try to learn to read/pronounce Polish. Anyone want to guess how the name Chrzaszcz is pronounced? I can tell you that – what I can’t tell you is how long it takes a kindergartner with that particular name to learn to write it!

Once again, they let me fetch Hans when he returned. He said the conditions were a lot windier than the day before and that keeping time had been much harder. But he had seen a few targets and a few pictures, and all in all he was happy. I wasn’t able to fetch Barry, so didn’t get his first impressions. At the end of the day they all reported the wind as an issue, though, so conditions seem to have been pretty consistent all day. A few of the other pilots I escorted back had nothing to say, but some were very chatty. One of the Finnish pilots told me that for a Scandinavian, it was very hot here. I told him the same applied for an African. It WAS a particularly hot day and probably not the last one we will have.

There was one problem by day’s end. Mary came back from her nav, reporting that her alternator had failed. We reported this and after some deliberations the owner of the aircraft suggested that they charge the battery enough for each flight, problem solved. The team wasn’t as keen on this solution, though, so Tony raised it at the Managers’ Meeting. Andreis agreed that a proper repair had to be done. I’m not sure exactly when the work happened, but when we got there next morning, the cowling was about ready to go back on.

After a competition day, the Managers’ Meeting is always a bit trickier. Rather than just feedback, there are usually “protests” by competitors who feel they were disadvantaged in one way or another. Tony went off to his meeting, then returned with some feedback and to hear if his team had protests. None of them did. So as a novice he checked with the team whether he should just report that and come back or whether he had to hang around for all the other protests.  Luckily listening to the others is not required. They seem to go in one by one to protest, and there was a line outside the meeting room “just like naughty boys outside the principal’s office, in Tony’s words, for hours. In fact there were still one or two waiting when we went up to bed.

Tony has just had a small miscalculation with the camera, so yesterday’s pictures are lost. I’ll try to “fake it” by taking a few today and adding them later.

Here are the team’s scores for the day: