World Precision Flying Championships
Ried Austria
WOULD THEY STILL BE SMILING IN TEN DAYS TIME !
Howard Cox Chief Judge Sheepwash
Chris Barnes Private Strip Basinstoke
Malcolm Evans Haverfordwest
John Fisher and Malcolm Evans ventured to Austria to participate in the World Precision Flying Championships, they flew out on July 8th to try and get ahead of the forecast European weather and advancing low pressure system, we had hoped to overnight at Grenchen in Switzerland but a local football derby meant no vacancies in town so at 6pm they decided to fly on to Ried in Austria we were met by an marshal on an Orange quad bike who soon taxied us to their relative allocated positions. Our hotelier was waiting for us and soon whisked us of to our hotel for the next week or so, once settled in to our comfortable room, we had supper and then a rather large ice cream as is called for on such occasions.
Next morning up at 8 and off to the airfield the organisers had three practice routes prepared to help ease us into both map reading onto 200,000:1 but alas not an aeronautical chart that had rather heavy wide boundaries depicted that left much to the imagination having flight planned and flown a nav Ex next in order was a half hour landing slot for the British Team we decided to carry out right hand circuits so as to become accustomed to the unusual approach downwind over a 500 ft ridge right base at a clump of trees around a church spire and straight onto finals, that church spire looked quite close!
The next few days were taken up with more practice Nav Ex and two half hour landing slots per day to allow all the teams an equal share of the landing box a 75 meter long and 12 metre wide white box laid out on the runway electrical trip wires would be added for the landing competition element. I think the average was some 700 to 8oo movements per day, the airfield had good facilities with one hanger turned into a restaurant and another into a pilot briefing area where daily team manager/pilot/ and weather briefing took place. They also had a rather natty six wheel drive quad fire engine. 
Oh dear now it was time for the completion this is where the nerves start to twitch as you enter the flight planning tent determined not to make any stupid mistake, also the team pep talk had been all about making gross error checks on our calculations on the first 20 to 30 minute portion of the flight planning this meant that I had burnt up an extra precious ten minutes of my planning time, at this time we are handed a computer calculated flight plan covering all eight legs from which to mark up our charts, with nearly sixty minutes up its time to leave the flight planning tent to be escorted to my aircraft some 300/400 meters away carful to study the ten photographs whilst we walked to the aircraft,
once at the aircraft first thing is to turn the GPS loggers on then align our photos on to a clear plastic work board attached to the dash thus still allowing visual access to all the instruments with 10 minutes to wheels roll, so engine start radio check, and taxi to holding point, as is usual in such competions one lines up approx two minutes before wheels roll time to ensure not to be held up by returning aircraft as no allowance is given, we have an invisible timing gate to break through at the other end of the runway and I had calculated that I should start my roll some 15 sec before my start gate time. Now I have 4 minutes to find and line myself up for the start Bu*@*r where is it, panic sets in then just some 400 meters before the start point gate a large white “A” appears my time allowance is + or - 2 seconds to go over the start, (right now where is that small road coming out of that wood) ( watch my time at the road junction) ( cross that railway on 42 secs) etc etc after what seems like hours but only 1 hour fifteen I have covered some 98 NM seen 8 turning point targets carried out three procedure turns and tried to keep within a 2 second time slot all the way around if that was not enough I also had to identify 10 pictures alas I had not seen any as all my time seemed to be taken up with navigating and timekeeping what an adrenalin rush. Back at the airfield park up to be met by an escort, shut down engine and start stop watch I had 5 minutes to make sure that all that I had seen was accurately marked on my competition chart after 4minutes 30 secs I hand my chart to the escort then tidy aircraft and into escort car driven to the debriefing and download loggers to see where I had been and at what time, oh well there’s always the second nav ex to pull it all back, now for a quick pint (well litre actually) part 2 to follow