World Aerobatic Championships, Burgos Spain 6/22/05

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a little known international sporting competition.

The US Aerobatic Team takes on the world at Burgos, Spain. I would like to share my interest in this sport with my FReeper FRiends. I hope you find this interesting.

I am getting updates from three of the team members on a regular basis - plus there is a website that will have scores, updates, pictures, etc. keeping all of us FANS involved in the day to day competition going on in Spain.

This competition is held somewhere in the world every other year. Last time (2003), it was in Lakeland, Florida, USA. Trophies are given out for individuals and for teams. In 2003, the Russians placed 1, 2, 3, with the highest ranking USA Pilot, Robert Armstrong, coming in fourth place. The team results were Russia, France, USA.

These are the best (competition) aerobatic pilots in the world. The United States has a team of ten - six men and four women - who will be representing us.

Other countries we know will be bringing teams include Russia, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, plus - who knows who else will show up... There is word we will see pilots - but maybe not whole teams from Finland, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, and Czech Republic. A minimum of three pilots is necessary to form an actual team.

The US Team will be flying several different airplanes. The American Made Zivko Edge 540 will be flown by Vicki Cruse, Janet Fitzke, and Kirby Chambliss. Also American Made is the Panzl S-330 which will be flown by Allyson Parker Lauck. Debby Rihn-Harvey has competed in the Worlds three times and David Martin, another WAC Veteran, will be flying the French made CAP-232. Robert Armstrong will be flying a CAP-231. Hubie Tolson, Michael Racy and Zach Heffley (our youngest team member at 24) will be flying the Russian Sukhoi 26.

Each competition starts with a Known also known as a Compulsory or Q program. Each pilot will fly the same sequence of maneuvers and will be judged by an international panel. The next program is the Freestyle. This allows each pilot to put together a sequence of maneuvers of their own creation.

Once the first two programs are flown, the first of the two Unknowns begin. These are a set of flight sequences designed by committee and given to the competitors 24 hours before they need to fly them. This is very difficult and is really separates the wheat from the shaft, if you know what I mean.

I will continue to update this thread to keep everyone up to date on what is happening in Spain. Please feel free to visit these websites for additional information – or if you have specific questions – let me know. I’ll try to answer them for you.

From one of our competitors......

Ok, so the perfect safety record is history. Two Caps and a Sukhoi are toast thus far.

The Sukhoi I trained in while waiting for mine to arrive, "Tiger" painted like Tony the Tiger, and a Cap tangled on the tarmac head-on yesterday evening. Neither won. The Cap will be sent back to France for repairs, and
the Sukhoi will be flying tomorrow after nothing more than having a new prop installed. Everyone is happy the collision didn't involve the meat department. No injuries.

The other was an accident involving the French warm up pilot. I am told it involved a steep slip to landing. The air is very thin and behaves completely differently than sea level flying, and it appears the slip just
went too far. The plane caught a wing on the runway, which broke off, and flipped the plane, somehow causing the wing to whip back around on top of
the pilot, then flipping the fuselage onto the canopy, where it came to rest
upside down. The pilot and plane were sprayed with foam, and amazingly and
quite luckily, there was no fire. The plane was righted with the pilot
inside, and he stepped out with only a broken ankle and pinky finger, in
addition to cuts on the head and face.

Thereafter, our team manager was drafted to fly warm up flights and will do
so in either Vickie's or Janet's Edge 540's. She has promised not to do
slips or steep turns.

The temps are running mid 90's with pretty good humidity for the desert. We
start diving into the box at 4500' - 5000' above the ground, which is 3500'
above sea level. That means we're operating between 4000' and 8000' or so.
The planes are gasping for air, constantly over temp on both oil and
cylinder heads. The canopy air ventilation feels like someone has mounted a
hair dryer there (which probably wouldn't work anyway because the voltage is
220 over here). Anyway, it's not cool in the least even at these altitudes.
The wings behave entirely differently also. Very easy to break out in pulls
and pushes. Snaps are mushy. Roll stops must be managed differently because
the ailerons seem to stall.. There is no waiting for the plane to stabilize
on a vertical line before rolling because there isn't enough energy to
complete the figure and fly away from it. Departures from vertical lines are
most always accomplished by pumping the elevator to try to reattach to the
airflow without falling out of whatever's next in the sequence.

Most of the above is embellished to make the reading more interesting for
you, but it is quite hot here in any case.

Overall, there is not a lot of exceptionally pretty flying due to the
conditions, with exception of some of the Russians, who have bigger engines,
wingtip and aileron extensions for more lift and roll control, and bigger
oil coolers, and in the case of their women team members, big hair.

However, we're stunt pilots with catlike reflexes and we can deal with it.

We've been frequenting a restaurant, "Hollywood", which is the most
Americanized other than McDonalds, and Burger King (both of which serve
beer), when we need a burger, rib or chicken wing fix. Our waitress, who is
most attractive with a variety of piercings and facial tattoos, speaks great
English.

It's most pleasing to know what you're eating before it comes to the table.
I've resorted on several occasions to hopping up with my menu, taking it to
a table which has just been served, and asking the patrons to point to the
menu selection they've made so I can make the connection. This is much
easier than learning Spanish or using a dictionary and saves lots of time.

At Team Tinto (FYI....the term for Red Wine is Spain is Vino Tinto), one of our mottos (there are many) is: "Never let
the truth get in the way of a good story".

Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick
Born: 1893 Died: 1979

Georgia Broadwick was nicknamed Tiny because she weighted 85 pounds and was only four feet tall. Tiny made her first jump in 1908 at age 15. She accumulated over 1100 jumps, including jumps at the 1915 and 1916 San Diego World's Fair, until she made her last jump in San Diego in 1922. Most of Tiny's jumps were with aerial barnstorming shows. Tiny was billed as "The Doll Girl", a name she hated with a passion. Her perspective was: "If you landed in a tree you were all right- but if you landed on a rooftop and rolled off, you were hurting."

Tiny was the first woman to make a jump from an aircraft on June 21, 1913. Glenn L Martin flew her up to 2000 feet above Griffith Park in Los Angeles, CA. Later she was the first woman to make a jump from a hydro aeroplane and first woman to make a water jump from an

In 1914 Broadwick gave the first demonstration of a parachute jump to the US government. The first four jumps were static line jumps. On the fourth jump the static line tangled with the aircraft so on the fifth jump she decided to not use the static line. She cut the static line so that it was long enough for her to pull the parchute pack open after she was clear of the airplane. This was the first premeditated FREEFALL jump by anyone. The US Army Signal Corps ordered its first Broadwick coatpack and initiated a new era in aviation safety.

Tiny's retirement from jumping did not come easily. She said: "It was terribly hard for me to settle down. I had so much pep and energy. I was lonesome for my work and occaisionally made a few jumps."

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