GYRO: Fun Rally 13 August Kitty Hawk

[FLYNOTE]

Hey Glennie, i am out of the country over the coming weekend. Very spyt to miss this event. I hope it is going to be a great success. Come on woer woerrers. Get behind the Hawkers on this one. We should support every effort one of us makes in the interest of our sport. Go for it! Stay involved. Flying together and sharing in the hangar talk afterwards is what makes for sharing a sport with like minded souls.

[old no 7]

Ag nee Johan, jammer jy gaan dit mis.

I will post more detail tomorrow and final arrangements tomorrow.

Avgas is on sale, but we can, by prior arrangement, have jerry cans of 95UL available, so please drop me a pm or call me to arrange extra fuel.
The rally route will be in the region of 75nm.

[old no 7]

Hello All,
Some final info for Saturday's fun Rally at Kitty Hawk:

Arrival before 9:00am
Briefing: 09:00am
09:00 - 10:00 route planning
10:00 - noon Rally
12:30 - Results
Distance will be approximately 75nm.
Fuel: Avgas at bowser 95UL by prior arrangement (email: g.dean@spoor.com by Friday)

Breakfast will be available off menu at Clubhouse.

If there are any pilots looking for navigators, please contact me on my email address.

My email: g.dean@spoor.com

[BONZAI BELL]

Hi Glen
Jacques and myself are definately in , weather permitting. if you could just confirm how many navigators will be available.
Some other gyronauts from Springs will confirm tomorrow.

[old no 7]

A newbie gyro pilot asked me for a bit more detail on how a fun rally works. Here follows an extract of my email response to him so that those who are considering what this is all about, it really isn't difficult. It is all about FUN:

The great thing about a fun rally is that it is for fun. No serious competition. The organiser will explain and teach novices exactly what to do.
It does a lot to teach or refresh flying discipline (speed and accuracy of flying). Also build teamwork between pilot & navigator.
If you don’t have a navigator, please let me know. There are a few trikers who would love the gyro experience.

The briefing will commence at 09:00am sharply.
Pilot and navigator get a printed map with a route already plotted on it. You will be given about 45 minutes to do your planning.
You nominate a ground-speed that you are going to fly and mark out your route with timings and compass degrees.
(the compass degrees are pretty useless for gyros because our compasses are so inaccurate, but you will find you fly by sight and landmarks and really don’t use your compass much anyway)

Each team is given a GPS logger which they place in their plane. This records their actual route travelled and this is downloaded for scoring at the end.

The route will be around 75nm in length comprising about 8 waypoints.
Along the way you have to identify landmarks which may or may not exist.

The actual rally will take about 90 minutes so you should be back by about 11:30.
Results and scoring takes about 45 minutes depending on the number of participants, so you should get away before 1pm.

If you need mogas, please let me know and I will arrange a few extra jerry cans.

[old no 7]

A newbie gyro pilot asked me for a bit more detail on how a fun rally works. Here follows an extract of my email response to him so that those who are considering what this is all about, it really isn't difficult. It is all about FUN:

The great thing about a fun rally is that it is for fun. No serious competition. The organiser will explain and teach novices exactly what to do.
It does a lot to teach or refresh flying discipline (speed and accuracy of flying). Also build teamwork between pilot & navigator.
If you don’t have a navigator, please let me know. There are a few trikers who would love the gyro experience.

The briefing will commence at 09:00am sharply.
Pilot and navigator get a printed map with a route already plotted on it. You will be given about 45 minutes to do your planning.
You nominate a ground-speed that you are going to fly and mark out your route with timings and compass degrees.
(the compass degrees are pretty useless for gyros because our compasses are so inaccurate, but you will find you fly by sight and landmarks and really don’t use your compass much anyway)

Each team is given a GPS logger which they place in their plane. This records their actual route travelled and this is downloaded for scoring at the end.

The route will be around 75nm in length comprising about 8 waypoints.
Along the way you have to identify landmarks which may or may not exist.

The actual rally will take about 90 minutes so you should be back by about 11:30.
Results and scoring takes about 45 minutes depending on the number of participants, so you should get away before 1pm.

If you need mogas, please let me know and I will arrange a few extra jerry cans.

[Condor]

This will be a first for our part of the world.

Some safe fun in your flying machine.

See you tomorrow.

[mak]

It seems like everyone enjoyed the day and even Ozgyro could find his way back.

[Kosie]

After yesterday's fun in the air I can say in all honesty - the Aussie can fly! I was his navigator and personally witnessed his flying skills and I am impressed. On final approach for runway 01 we noticed that the windsock at the northern end of the runway was pointing straight towards us, while the one closest to us was pointing at right angles to the runway! So we landed with a 90 degree crosswind and the touchdown was simply perfect - on the centre line and as smooth as a baby's uhhmm ... smooth, very smooth.

In all, the fun navigation rally was great fun and we all learned a great deal things about navigating without electronic devices (well, most of us anyway), without compass and in an open cockpit (again, most of us). A big thanks to Glen for organizing it and to Frank Eckard and his lovely wife for administering the rally. They went out of their way to make things simple for us rookie navigators. Also to our esteemed safety officer on the day a big thank you.

To all who missed out on the rally: you really, really missed out. But the good news is that you have a year to reconsider and join again next year - well Glen promised to arrange it again next year. (Just by the way - I would like to navigate with OzGyro again if he is still around and if he is willing to forgive me for missing three of the checkpoints).

Kobus

[D2O]

Had a breakfast at Kitty Hawk after doing some circuits at Rhino Park, and watched the guys planning. It must have been fun!
Some pics from my "muk en druk":

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small1.jpg (64.89 KiB) Viewed 1736 times

small4.jpg (58.49 KiB) Viewed 1736 times

[Jabbanaught]

Results ?

Some More Pictures ?

Congrats with the event !!

[OzGyro]

Hi All

Firstly thanks to Glen, Frank and his LOVELY wife for organising a great event. I am pretty sure we ALL learnt something from the experience.

Kobus thanks so much for your kind words (The cheques in the mail) I am pretty sure it should be me praising you, we may have missed three points, but am very very sure without your help I would have been lost just after the right turn out from 01.

Guys in honesty it was a great day and hopefully we can make the next one bigger and better. My navigation skills in this country (or any other for that matter) arent brilliant, but days like Saturday can teach you so much whilst having a hell of a lot of fun along the way. Maybe there is some way we can incorperate something like this into the next North meets South??

Guys just some food for thought, whilst we had a reasonable turn out yesterday. I know for a fact there are more than the 10 or so gyros that showed up for the event in this great country. We always cop our fair share of criticism about our attitudes and antics. It's organised events like this that give us a postive light in the eyes of the CAA etc. I would ask you all, next time there is any type of event scheduled that we all try and make an effort to attend, as we all know flying is all about attitude, and attiude begins with one person "YOU"

Cheers
Darren