Pilot's Post - Krugersdorp Flying Club Airfield Festival

With the original spot landing competition held on 8th July where the weather turned sour with the club having had to abandon the competition, it was rescheduled for the windy month of August, and as it would be, the windy month did not disappoint.

The club organised the day to be in the format of an Air Festival, the first time to combine a host of other activities to make it a family event for everybody, where everybody with an aircraft could open up their hangar treasures and put them on display for static judging, pilots wanting to exercise their skills could take part in the spot landing competition, the RC modellers from Snoopy's Squadron were out in force to show their various aircraft models, and craft markets for those wanting to browse all sorts of apparel.

The main event however was the spot landing competition, and by the time entries closed, there were 40 competitors organised into 10 slots of half an hour each, 4 aircraft per slot. Having flown from Kittyhawk in the morning in the C182, saw around 20 knots of tailwind in pristine clear skies after the cold front having passed through in the night, and boy it was cold on the airfield. At least the wind was right down runway 08, although windsheer was playing havoc of getting to land accurately on arrival.

The wind by 09h30 was deemed to be acceptable and the competition got underway, every slot of aircraft doing exceptionally well at keeping the circuits well separated for each competitor's three landings. The scoring was the tally of the lowest distance of all three landings to the 1 metre wide bingo line. It was clear the local Krugersdorpers knew their runway and could read the wind conditions well compared to the visiting pilots who got caught out by the valley sucking them down and landing short.

After everybody completed their three rounds at lunch time, prize giving was hosted by Club Chairman John Addis, with the overall winner being Peter Lastrucci in his Cessna 152 ZS-CAT, he achieved a magnificent 2 points, one a bingo, the other two 1 metre before and 1 metre after the line, followed by Dale de Klerk in 2nd place in a Cessna 182 ZS-CWU at 5 points. Third place went to Charles Pratley in a Cessna 172 ZS-LLI with a score of 8 points.

First lady pilot was Marie Reddy with a score of 23 flying the Ikarus C42 ZS-EEE, and being in one of the first slots to fly in the windiest part of the day had her lightly wing-loaded plane thrown around somewhat thus challenging her to make the line in these conditions.

The first visiting pilot was Willem Greying flying a Savannah ZS-FXZ with 29 points in 17th place. Just goes to show the locals wiped out the foreign competition. Then the greaser of the day went to Dieter Bock in his super-fast Lance Air legacy ZS-DCB.

The static judges roamed around the field and inspected aircraft put out for display, with all sorts of judging criteria, with the following results:

This year, sponsors were very generous, with around R 60 000 up for grabs as prizes, and many thanks need to be extended to them to support our flying fraternity.

Also, thanks is extended to the whole organising team, with line judges, John Addis, James Engelbrecht, Dave Lister, Deon Schlebusch and Tobie Weber who had to endure the icy wind at the threshold most of the day. Chris Kyle was the safety officer for the day, kept the proceedings safe together with Chief Marshall Paul Lastrucci and AFIS in the tower Steve George.

All in all, a very successful day with excellent breakfast and lunch catering made available in the clubhouse.

Events 2017
SAPFA

Krugersdorp Flying Club Airfield Festival - 19 August 2017

By Rob Jonkers. Photos by Ian Morrison and Rob Jonkers