WE HAVE won the gong! Great day! This particular gong is a rather odd affair looking like a cross between a none-too-minor iceberg and an amoeba. Quite why it takes this form is not given to me to know, but I am most careful not to drop it on my foot because it would probably amputate three toes.
But who cares? This is the Shell Trophy awarded annually at the Biggin Hill Air Show for the best formation display, and John Taylor and I have just been presented with it. So, great day! This is not our first display trophy – but John and I are frail human beings who, like most frail human beings, don’t object too strenuously to having their egos gently stroked once in a blue moon.
In a corner, the British Civil Aviation Authority sits if not exactly glowering, certainly with pursed lips and a studied examination of the structure supporting the pilots’ tent. The British CAA does not approve of “Best Display” awards. It does forbid them – well, it can’t, I don’t suppose – but it does tend to “discourage” the practise, because it has this mindset that it makes display pilots try too hard.
I profoundly and utterly disagree. I think there should be awards. It is all a matter of presentation. Not the presentation of the trophy at the post-display beer-up, but the presentation of the concept at the pre-brief before the show starts. If the Display Director were to stand up and say: “Hey guys, we’ve gonna give a gong for the most spectacular display”, then that would be completely irresponsible. But the best of them don’t put it like that, or anything like it. What they actually say is: “As you know there is a ‘Best Display’ trophy at this air show. It is awarded by the Flying Control Committee, who is in charge of safety. So it you are too low, pulling too hard, too spectacular, misjudge crowd centre-point, bust the display line – forget it. You ain’t gonna win no trophy. This is an award for a safe and well-flown display. And only for a safe and well-flown display”. Now quite how the CAA can argue with that I don’t understand. Or, to be brutally honest, I do understand. Up to a point.
Years ago I was leading our Firebird Team at a display which I knew gave an award. It was our fourth display of the afternoon, and we were hot and tired. I made allowances for that, and was concentrating particularly hard on getting everything in exactly the right place…. And this led a rough display. There was no single mighty mistake – I just didn’t capture the rhythm which is vital to all good display flights. Number Two flew fine – it was me who was unsettled. As we taxied in I tasted the ashes of self-castigation – a gritty morsel which all hightime display pilots find themselves chewing once in a while if they’re honest with themselves.
At our post-flight debriefing – a most essential feature in the lives of all aerobatic teams, if one is apt to become… er, shall we say, a trifle frank. Number Two said: “You were thinking about that bloody award, Boss. You tried too hard.” I blinked. Was I? Had I? I do not know. I’d like to think it didn’t have a bearing. I’d like to think I was just tired and flew a ratty display because aerobatic pilots are humans and everyone flies a ratty display occasionally when the runes are not in auspicious alignment. But I still wonder…. So, okay, I concede the CAA may have a point. But I still believe the good of an award far outweighs the evil – so long as it is quite clear that the trophy is for good, accurate flying in the right place at the right height, and not a gong for the gung-ho.
Like I said, presentation of the concept…. Moreover, to most display pilots the competition element ain’t gonna be nuthin’ new. For example, the hot-ship aerobatic drivers have all – or very nearly all – come up through the aero competition route, where striving to win is the whole raison d’etre and learning to live with it when you don’t is a most necessary attribute for the retention of sanity. Likewise – although a rose of a different niff – military pilots spend much of their lives in a competitive environment where a mess-up on exercise leads to a rasping interview and a mess-up in action to a red-hearted fireball terminating the aviator’s functionality. These are not people likely to get in a tizz over an iceberg-amoeba award at an air show. Nice to win it – certainly. Sulk if you don’t – maybe five minutes. Change something in middisplay to try to win it – c’mon, nobody’s that stupid. Are they? But…. there is always a BUT.
UNSIGHTED
There is a word in the English lexicon I regard as the worst swearword in the language. It is not four-lettered. The word is “unsighted”. I have spent much time in close formation aerobatics, and THE big crime is to become unsighted – for example, to re-join hauling on bank in such a way as to obscure your sight of Lead under your own wing. Formation five feet away, fine. Do anything – anything – unsighted, and you’re on the road with your backpack. All formation pilots have this tattooed inside their necessarily thick skulls.
So now along comes a new kind of air show act called the ARC Series – the Aerobatic Racing Challenge Series. It is happening at a number of American air shows – and what happens in the US tends to cross the pond after a while.
The idea is that two aircraft of similar performance (an Extra 300 and a Pitts S2C, perhaps) fly down the crowd-line together but 500 feet apart laterally, and as they pass the start-gate, both commence the same eight or ten-manoeuvre aerobatic sequence. Not in formation but as an actual race. First past the post at the end of the sequence gets the gong. Simple as that.
Hmmm….
Now I am all in favour of new air display concepts. We must never forget that to keep pulling in the crowds things need to evolve. Look at the audience figures Red Bull haul in – but even they do not race two aerobatics aeroplanes together in the same lump of sky. And if they were ever to float the idea I can imagine most of their pilots suggesting that they go attempt a certain anatomical impossibility.
But this is what the Aerobatic Racing Challenge is all about. Two aeroplanes aerobating in the same lump of sky. Now I am the first to admit I have not actually tried this – but I’m not at all sure I want to. The organisers, of course, take issue with my words “the same lump of sky” – they say the aerobatic box is divided up into corridors. So there is an imaginary “glass wall” in the middle of the lateral separation distance of 500 feet. So you might brief: “This is your line 250 ft NORTH of runway centre-line, and this is your line 250 ft SOUTH of it”. Problem solved….
Ho! Is it?
Two hundred and fifty feet is 76 metres. Laterally Throw in a crosswind. Then introduce me please to any display pilot who has never over or under-estimated a crosswind and got 76 metres – or a whole lot more – out of position as a result…
Introduce me to one such – and I will introduce you to a liar. We have all done it. So now we are in a race between two pilots, either of whom may stay on line or maybe drift off-line just a bit….
And who, in the nature of the beast, are not both going to be sighted on each other at all times?
In theory the pilot in second place should be sighted on the guy ahead – but remember this is a race, and the idea in races is to overtake…
Hmmm, again.
The ARC organisers have thought of this, and set safety rules accordingly. Finding out what these safety rules are is a wee bit like pulling teeth because (fact) they don’t want to publish them in case somebody else copies them.
Make what you will of that – but they have considered the unsighted issue. Their solution is that at every change from vertical to level (at the bottom of a loop or stall-turn, etc) the pilot who is sighted on the other aircraft presses the button and calls “In sight”. You might get both calling “In sight” – but so long as there’s one, that’s good to continue. If there’s no “In sight” call the Race Boss on the ground will bawl “Knock it off, knock it off”, which stops the race. The guy nearest the crowd then goes straight on while the one furthest away breaks 90 degrees away from the crowd. The Race Boss can also stop the race if he himself sees anything he isn’t happy about.
So nothing can go wrong – right? Well… er, ye-ah…. Sort of somewhere between probably and maybe. But it all sounds a kinda high workload – and only a pilot who has nearly had an unsighted collision can tell you how incredibly, astoundingly, quickly it can happen.
Then throw in the fact that it will certainly occur to people that get round vertical manoeuvres faster time-wise if you actually reduce power on the up-lines – which is vastly counter-intuitive to any aerobatic pilot, and winds up the workload still more while winding down the kinetic energy of the sequence.
Okay, it is all too easy for old pelicans to grump in their nests. But I would say to the race pilots caveat emptor – buyers of the idea be bloody careful.
Hmmm, one more time…
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