SAPFA Rally
The World Rally Flying Championships WRFC 2020 was planned to take place in Stellenbosch in November 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic scuppered all chances of this happening in 2020. At the same time, the South African national championships that were scheduled for April were cancelled.
As the pandemic abated in 2021, the South African Power Flying Association (SAPFA) was able to get back on track with the planning of the WRFC in 2021, which South Africa will host in Stellenbosch in November this year.
With this competition secured and the rules allowing each country to field a maximum of 10 teams, SAPFA set out as its objective to field 10 teams to qualify to Protea team level, which had started back in 2019. With Jonty Esser as the National team coach, he set out to train novice teams and given the limited opportunities in 2020, it was decided to hold a Nationals in April in Stellenbosch and a second qualifier round in June to allow for maximum training opportunity to achieve the criteria to achieve Protea colours. At the Nationals, three teams qualified, which left the second qualifier round to have another seven teams qualify.
For this qualifier competition, Mary de Klerk assumed the role of competition director to create the routes for the three days and she was assisted by Leon Bouttell. Between them they created the plot and the supporting photographs that were photographed from the air. In total around 100 pictures were used over the three days, which was well worth it from the quality of the images, which were significantly better and more recent than had Google images been used.
Each day’s routes were set with increasing difficulty, including that the plot became more challenging, with five minutes less time each day between papers time and take-off time. There were 11 competitor teams taking part, with varied aircraft between them. Day one took the teams out north of Brits airfield and returning via Rooikopjes dam, mostly flat which helps the timing somewhat. Day 2 was a clockwise route over the Magaliesburg mountains and south past Hartebeespoort dam, with a difficult arc flight back over the ridge. Day 3 was an anti-clockwise route over Rustenburg before going south over the ridge with a good proportion of the flight down the centre of the Magaliesburg valley.
The qualification criteria was to meet 30% of the total points available for each day (900) totalling 2700 for Protea Colours and 40% (1200) for Aero Club Colours. From these scores a team for the WRFC 2021 could be selected. The score results below give the scores for the three days and the team selection that was made to represent South Africa at the World Championships. Now the training phase starts in earnest for the ten teams, to prepare them to compete against international teams, since the Protea team is determined to achieve a podium position in Stellenbosch in November.
Many thanks to Mary and Leon for organising a fantastic event, ably assisted by officials Jacques Jacobs (Landing judge and placing the elusive ground markers), Nigel Musgrave (Safety Officer and Landing line judge), Scrutineers Phil & Moira Wakeley, Sean Cronin, Renier Moolman, timekeepers, Barbara Friebose, Ursula Schwebel, Anthea Cronin and logger management Sheila Kaiser. It takes an extensive team to run an event such as this one.