Gazette & Herald - Sports News  RSS feed | About

The skies over Usti Nad Orlici, a small Czech town set in the Orlici hills three hours East of Prague, came alive during the second two weeks of August as it played host to the 11th World Microlight Championships.

Devizes Microlight pilot, Richard Rawes, as a member of the British Microlight Team was amongst the pilots, navigators and supporters from 15 nations assembling to compete for the coveted titles of World Champion in four microlight classes.

After a three day road journey for Richard and his family, the destination of Usti Nad Orlici was finally reached.

The first task on arrival was the preparation of what would become home for the next two weeks; located in a field immediately adjacent to the airfield, they established their camp.

With luxuries such as power to the camp site only recently become the norm at these events, the site was as expected - pretty austere. Running water and sanitary facilities were, however, provided in mobile form just a short walk from the site and were kept clean by a small group of local helpers.

The competition fortnight was divided into a practice week followed by the actual competition. With the majority of the British Team having arrived by the first Tuesday, preparing themselves and their aircraft for the forthcoming competition became the priority.

Every opportunity to check performance and get familiar with the local terrain and flying charts was being taken.

A first taster of the type of navigation task the Team were to be subject to was provided by the competition director, during a practice session later that week.

However, with his tenth wedding anniversary to celebrate, Richard took Jeannette, his wife, and two young girls on a train journey to Prague for the day and, therefore, missed this opportunity.

On the last practice day, the competitors also witnessed a type of task that had not been flown in any previous championship; a timed circuit with a precision landing.

The aim of this task was to take-off from a marked out area subdivided into scoring regions, fly a circuit in precisely four minutes and land back within that same area to touch down in the maximum scoring region. The practice proved invaluable to all the pilots as it enable a mental 'picture' of the circuit along with timings around it to be created.

What was not yet realised was that the opening ceremony on the following day was to be immediately proceeded by this task for real.

With the many hundreds of local spectators to witness their efforts this was a true test of the competitor's mettle and one that also set the scene for the forthcoming week.

Richard was one of the very few pilots to score maximum points in the opening task, scoring maximum points for the landing region as well as maximum points for the timing element, having landed precisely on four minutes and zero seconds.

Breezy and thermic conditions were prominent throughout the championships, creating challenges to the crews over and above those being set by the competition director. Maintaining track accuracy and groundspeed was particularly difficult and, in some cases, required in-flight decisions to abandon certain elements of the tasks to focus on those that could be achieved with greater accuracy. Interestingly, those crews that did choose to abandon, for example groundspeed accuracy, actually scored higher than those who chose to fight the conditions.

After the first few tasks, Richard was in a commanding position within his single-seat weightshift class, but there were very few points separating the top pilots. A mid-week decision to cancel flying for the day followed due to forecast weather conditions.

Many pilots then chose to take advantage of this opportunity to view the aircraft museum in Prague whilst others chose to visit local areas of interest. Unfortunately, the weather cancellation proved to be a lost opportunity for competition flying as the day transpired to be one of the calmest of the week.

However, not all flying opportunities were lost, as those crews that remained local to the airfield chose to practice their precision landings in the calm evening air.

The competition director had by now become aware that the competitors were not too happy flying in breezy and very thermic conditions; many crews had been recounting stories that compared their flights with being in a tumble dryer.

Thus having lost one day's flying already, flying on the Thursday was postponed until conditions had calmed down.

With many precision landing tasks interspersed with navigation and economy tasks already flown, the final day approached with what could only be described as the task from hell.

Only the basic outline of the task was briefed to the crews as the detail was to be provided 30 minutes prior to take-off whilst the crews were in effective quarantine by their aircraft.

During this 30 minute period all planning and flight preparation had to be achieved. The task itself required the competitors to maintain constant groundspeed around a trapezoidal course whilst looking for ground markers and features identified within photographs.

The big catch to this was that along each leg, a particular marker, if spotted, would denote the start of a circular track whose centre would have been the next turn-point on the trapezium.

This circle would have to be plotted in-flight whilst maintaining constant groundspeed around its circumference and also maintaining look-out for the other markers a nd photos.

The plotting of the circles was to be repeated three times at each of the corners of the route.

What could then only be described as an act of god intervened. Although the task had begun and a number of crews were already en-route, reports started to come back that fog lay over critical parts of the track.

The competition director then had little choice but to cancel the task. Relief for some! After an emergency briefing session with Team leaders, the competition director then set an alternative navigation task for when the fog had dispersed.

With the 11th and final task complete, it was a nervous wait for the Richard as the scores were calculated from his task map and the gps logger carried in his aircraft. The long wait was rewarded with a good set of results that maintained Richard in his Gold medal winning position.

The remaining British Team pilots also achieved remarkable results taking a further two individual Gold medals, an individual Silver medal and an individual Bronze medal.

Overall, the British Team were rewarded with the Silver medal behind the host nation and an unofficial Team Gold for the two weightshift aircraft classes.

Richard now adds this second World Championship Gold to the European Gold that he won last year as well as this year's National Champion title.

10:25am Saturday 8th September 2007

Print   Email this   Comment