SAPFA Rally Flying RSA National Team Practise Brakpan 15.01.22

By Jonty Esser. Photos Willie Bodenstein

16.01.2022



I, Jonty Esser, am personally so proud of our general aviation aviators for helping grow the most challenging Aviation Sport known to Aviators - This sport requires many skills sets and crew discipline from flying to time management and no dispute nor bias can be used to improve your position or results.


DESCRIPTION OF RALLY FLYING

The sport of Air Rally Flying is a two-crew operation, with a pilot and navigator. The emphasis here is on accurate plotting and observation. The penalties are weighted accordingly. The navigator is given a sealed envelope approximately fifteen minutes prior to take-off. The envelope contains clues for each turning point on the route. The navigator has to pin-point the turning points on the map based on these clues and in order to compute the track for the pilot to fly. This is often completed in the air. The pilot has to fly accurately along the route and the aircraft is timed at various points. There are also photographs to be found along the route. Photographs for the turning points are also supplied. These photographs may or may not be accurate, so giving you a true/false situation to contend with at each turning point.

Competitions also include a landing along the route as well as one on return.

The competitions are scored with the assistance of an approved GNSS logger and penalties are awarded for timing, misidentified photographs and landings that are short or long." source - https://www.fai.org/page/gac-rally-flying

Your Current National Flying Team is -
Rob Jonkers - Team Manager
Jonty Esser - Team Capitan and Coach
Saturday the 15th of Jan 2022 was the first National Team practice held at Brakpan Airfield. The venue is very hospitable and serves as a great well-organized facility catering for all the needs of the National Rally Flying team.











We are preparing for the 22nd World Rally Flying National Championship that will be held in FABB (Brits Airfield), after many hard hours and selfless dedication - Our SAPFA Chairman - Rob Jonkers - spent many hours to draw up a proposal to present to the FAI General Aviation Commission (GAC), after the first postponement from 2020 to 2021 and one cancellation 2021 due to COVID and travel restrictions. This final proposal for 2022 was approved by the FAI GAC. Rob had to sacrifice his and Martin's place in the team to make this happen.

Rob Jonkers, we are grateful and appreciate your sacrifice and hard work you do for General Aviation - thank you.

As the Coach, I have adopted a training program partly from the Polish and created a hybrid training program to highlight and improve the challenges each of our crews encounters. The 6 turn-point course that was used at this training day, my design, was to focus on the accurate and more importantly, the timing for the pilots. The minimum point that could be scored is ZERO (0) and that is the goal for each crew. This is were my PRIDE in our team comes from, the incredible improvements of each crew that participated was tremendous.






The participants were Jonty and Sandi, Tarryn and Iaan, Apie and Frederick, Adrian and Adriaan, Fanie and Herman and Hendrik. All crews flew two rounds barring myself and Sandi.











All are welcome to come join us for our next training session that will be held at Brakpan next weekend again. If you require more information or a comprehensive explanation of what we are doing, please call Jonty on 0828559435







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