Posted Friday, April 8, 2011 @ 10:18 PM
Hi Guys,
I hope you enjoy reading it, but a couple of paragraphs got left out at the end:
En route to any event, I always squeeze in a final practice over a feature aligned with the venue’s display axis – a stretch of railway, an isolated tree line, a quiet country road, anything of similar length and pointing in the same direction. This way I get a feel for the conditions, and assess the likely wind and its effects between 1,500 and 300 feet, as well as ensuring I’m up to speed and as current as possible. If the site is off-airfield, and particularly if it is over water, near hills, or in any other visually unusual setting, I find somewhere similar for a quick, final, low-level practice.
For Perth’s Red Bull Air Race, held over a stretch of the Swan River so wide as to be lake-like, I found a similarly-shaped bay in a body of water 50 miles south and practiced assiduously over that, both for a couple of weeks beforehand, and on the morning of the big show. For London’s event, held over a short, narrow, slightly curved stretch of the Thames, I found a similarly-orientated creek in an unpopulated area near Tilbury and flew my routine a couple of times over that. The more practice you can get, and the more realistic that practice, the better.
We fly aerobatics because we enjoy them and our feeling of mastery over our machine, plus the freedom of using all three of the sky’s dimensions. So, practising our routine should be a pleasure we are happy to repeat again and again. I have never found that practice makes perfect, but it continually helps me to improve, and I love doing it.
Yours, Bob
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