By Jonty Esser photos by Andre Venter
On arrival, we received an overwhelming welcome from the hosts and the locals of Krugersdorp were sincerely friendly and would recommend visiting them, we were introduced to the famous “Stasie Koffie” which was a traditional way to drink coffee back in the day when milk was not easily available, thus the condensed milk in place of fresh milk. We had a delicious breakfast before the briefing. The Chairman of KFC presented the airfield related briefing and then Frank Eckard presented the Competition section.
ANR (Air Navigation Race) is an exciting, fun and short route competition format designed to make navigation and CRM focus points and make both pilot and navigator work together to achieve a good result. Twenty minutes before the flight you are provided with a map with a corridor 800m wide, between 15 and 25 nm with about 10 turn points and the photos of the start point and finish point (these points are timed - you need to be over that point at a precise time and will be penalized 3 points for every second you are early or late), the objective is to stay in the corridor and if you wander out the corridor for more than 5 seconds you will be penalized 3 points for every second from that point until you have managed to get back in the corridor.
To give you an idea of how narrow 800m is at 1000’ AGL, the sides of the C150 cowling just fit inside the corridor. Sandi and I haven’t flown ANR together before as my Son Jonathan normally is my navigator, he has study commitments for now and sadly couldn’t fly this weekend.
Hats off to Sandi who is a world-class navigator and after our first round and poor performance we both came to the same conclusion to improve. It was simple - “I need to listen to my navigator” - we tried this the second round and flew a clear round barring the start and finish timing points that racked up a few penalties.
Sandi and I want to thank Frank and Cally Eckard for running a professional and world-class event. Overall the competition was a well-organized event and was nice to see SACAA present. This is a fun way to improve your flying skills and your navigator does not need to be a licensed pilot you can fly with a family member or friend as your navigator.
I highly recommend all pilots and navigators attend at least one of these competitions.
More info can be found at www.sapfa.co.za
