South Africans Flying the Flag at World Rally Flying Championships

The Aero Club d’Italia hosted the 24th FAI World Rally Flying Championships in the town of Ferrara, 20nm northeast of Bologna. This was the second time Italy has hosted the Championships, the first being in Ravenna in 1999. South Africa was represented by the lone team of Tarryn and Iaan Myburgh, accompanied by Barbara Friebose as international judge, Hans Schwebel as international chief judge, and Ursula Schwebel. This was the 3rd World Championship that Tarryn and Iaan have competed in, following on from Brits in 2022 and Macon, France, in 2023. It proved to be a successful campaign, bringing back the 1st Place trophy in the Landings Competition.

The opening ceremony was a colourful affair with the 17 participating nations being paraded through the town square behind a group of flag throwers, accompanied by trumpeters and drummers. The town was a hive of activity as the event coincided with the annual busker festival. After some speeches and introductions by selected dignitaries, including the competition director, president of the GAC and mayor of Ferrara, our own Hans Schwebel, acting as the chief judge, hoisted the FAI flag, declaring the championships open.

For the readers unfamiliar with rally flying, the scored component comprises 3 elements, namely navigation, observation and landing. Each crew receives three 1:200,000 maps, a clue sheet, a timing sheet, turnpoint photos and en route photos. The crew then needs to prepare the route on the maps using the clue sheet. The time allowance for preparation work is 2 minutes per turnpoint before the crew needs to take off. Therefore, if there are 15 turnpoints, including the start and finish points, the crew receives 30 minutes of preparation time. The time sheet indicates when the crew needs to be at each turnpoint. There is a two-second grace period, after which 3 penalty points are accumulated for each second early or late that you arrive at the turnpoint, up to a maximum of 100 penalty points per turnpoint.

The observation component requires the crew to identify whether the photo given for each turnpoint is true or false. For each incorrect answer, a crew incurs 100 penalty points. If the crew does not answer, the penalty is 50 points. In addition, the crews need to find 20 en route photos and 5 ground markers and indicate the position of these on the route. Incorrectly identifying an en route photo or ground marker results in 50 penalty points per photo. Not finding an en route photo or ground marker incurs 30 penalty points.

Finally, for the landing, the pilot needs to touch down with their main wheels on a 2m wide line to score 0 points (a bingo), after which for each 5 meters away from that line, an incremental 10 penalty points are incurred. For landing short, 60 penalty points are incurred per 5 meters. A maximum of 200 penalty points can be incurred for a normal landing.

The first competition day took crews north of Ferrara, crossing the river Po. The route was relatively challenging, with the third and fourth legs comprising connected arcs. Regardless of this, three teams, two from Poland and one from Slovakia, returned with a navigation score of 0. Even more impressive was the fact that Marcin and Joanna Skalik from Poland also scored a 0 for observation, meaning they correctly identified every turnpoint photo, en route photo and ground marker. The only penalties they incurred for the day were 60 for their landing. The landing was where the South African crew of Tarryn and Iaan Myburgh shone, scoring a bingo. Only one other crew achieved a bingo landing on the day. Tarryn and Iaan scored a respectable 225 points for their navigation, but found the observation a challenge with 745 points.

After heavy overnight rains and waking to overcast conditions, the start to the second day was delayed. The forecast showed a tight flying window with conditions worsening again in the late afternoon. The decision was therefore made to fly the shortest of the prepared routes, which took crews to the southeast of Ferrara. In addition, the scheduled landings for the day were cancelled due to the parallel grass runway with the landing lines being waterlogged. To further highlight the extremely high level of the current top rally pilots, another three crews returned after Day 2 with navigation scores of 0, achieved by teams from Poland, the Czech and France. This was the second day in a row that Michal Wieczorek and Marcin Kwiatosz from Poland achieved this feat. Tarryn and Iaan also had an improved day, with a navigation score of 169 and an observation score of 610. This was despite a mis-plot of a turnpoint resulting in flying to an incorrect feature and incurring 100 penalty points.

Day 3 arrived with high temperatures and high humidity. The route was again to the north of Ferrara and covered the longest distance of the competition. The route also featured some challenging legs, both in terms of distance and lack of features. This was shown by the results, with a third of the field scoring over 1000 penalty points on the day. Tarryn and Iaan followed this trend, scoring 253 for their Navigation and just over 1000 points for their observation. Their landing result was decent, with 30 penalty points for landing.

The last competition day was also the most scenic of the competition. Crews flew in a north-easterly direction towards the Adriatic Sea, with one of the arc legs over the water. With a continuously changing heading and only time and groundspeed to rely on, this made for an interesting challenge. The day was won by the Czech team of David Cerny and Jan Havik with a score of 45 penalty points (15 for Navigation, 30 for observation and 0 for landing). Competition fatigue started showing as small mistakes started creeping in for most teams. Tarryn and Iaan found the day very challenging in both navigation and observation and scored a total score of 1,481 penalty points, including missing a couple of turnpoints; however, the flight was followed by another bingo landing.

With the competition days finished, all that remained was the “International Evening” and the closing ceremony. The International Evening is a tradition at the World Rally Flying Championships, where each participating nation showcases food or drink from their country, and competitors get the chance to socialise with each other and exchange war stories from the competition. Tarryn prepared some Melktertjies (the drink, not the tart) and most who tried it simply had to come back for more. Also on offer was pasta from the Italians, salmon from the Norwegians and an assortment of cheeses from France. Since all the flying was completed, alcohol was, however, the preferred way to showcase your country, with beer on tap from the Czech team, Jägermeister from Germany, Vodka from Poland and various wines and other spirits.

The airfield was transformed for the closing ceremony, with the town of Ferrara joining in the fun with stalls of food, drink, gelato and coffee on offer for both participants and visitors. In addition, trampolines and flight simulators were set up to provide entertainment. Prizes were handed out during the closing ceremony, followed by an excellent four-course Italian dinner including local breads, cheeses, cold meats and pasta. Teams also hand out gifts from their countries to thank fellow competitors and officials and the Rooibos tea from South Africa was well received.

The various categories and the winners were announced as follows:

Best all-female team: Dorthe Grubek & Alexandra Kirchner (Germany)

Best young team: Matous Adam & Stepan Sedlacek (Czech)

Best observation: Marcin Chrząszcz & Michał Chrząszcz (Poland)

Best landing crew: Tarryn Myburgh & Iaan Myburgh (South Africa)

Adele Schramm & Francois Hatrisse (France)

Krzysztof Wieczorek & Kamil Wieczorek (Poland)

Overall Championship: Petr Jonáš & Marek Velát (Czech)

Marcin Chrząszcz & Michał Chrząszcz (Poland)

Lukáš Běhounek & Kryštof Bobek (Czech)

Team: Czechia

Poland

France

Throughout the championship, Tarryn and Iaan received countless messages and well-wishes from friends, family and the extended aviation community. They would like to thank everyone for the extraordinary support throughout the practice and competition. They would also like to thank Jonsson Workwear for donating team shirts, Rooibos Limited for donating boxes of rooibos tea to give as a thank you to competitors and officials, and the South African Power Flying Association for their support.