CD's Report
 An astonishing variety of single and two seat 'Pitts Special' biplanes has
shaped much of aerobatic history around the world since August 28th
 1945
when Curtis made his first ever flight in an aeroplane bearing his name.
"What a day!" his logbook records, and the ensuing adoption and development of
that original format by countless home-builders and production facilities
has resulted in at least 120 examples currently on just the UK CAA's G-INFO pages;
multiply that by the undoubted number of co-owners and sharers and the
affection for this diminutive but extraordinarily effective machine is
clear. Next year being the 70th anniversary of this momentous first flight
the BAeA will stage a Pitts-only commemorative event, and so last weekend at
Shropshire Aero Clubs' lovely Sleap airfield we set out to run a couple of
multi-level trials that included a Tiger Trophy style percentage based
'proper' contest on the Saturday and a timed / speed running of the Standard
level Known sequence with penalties for the slower flights ... plus our
first-ever Concours D'elegance open to all-comers and their Pitts'es on the
Sunday. In purist
 terms not so deadly serious maybe, but for those who made
the effort a helluva lot of fun!
The English weather of course poked its usual oar into the proceedings, but
us Brits are used to all that and so in-between all t he PROB30 TEMPO ...
8000SHRA's we saw some energetic flying and everyone had a great time. In
fact the frontal line of transit-proof Wx caused more anguish to Sleap's
south and west than locally, but by 1200 almost all had battled their way to
arrive in sunny conditions and after a rather different (than usual)
briefing the show was on. With only eleven pilots to fly your CD decided
that the sequences should be
 repeated and the result totalled, but for the second
flight 180° about and
thus with the start direction
reversed to spice-up the spatial orientation a bit ... in the event it added some frowns
 and trepidation, but everyone managed it well and it
certainly helped to fill the day. While BAeA chairman ACC in his venerable
S-2A stormed away in the 'normal' direction first sequence it was the two local lads Alex Cartwright and Aidan Smith who made the better job of the
reverse oriented affair, on aggregate G-KITI bagging the gold and silver
while uncle Al held-off Simon Hampton for the bronze.
Sunday started out of step for some - the staff at one popular local
hostelry still
being dead to the world at breakfast time, their incumbent pilots arrived at
briefing well prepared but still hungry ... maybe that's why it was so cheap!
For this second day operations commenced with a knock-out version of the
Standard level Known sequence, where beyond the target-time of 2m30s
there lurked an 8 point penalty per second. This time those several thousand
hours instructing in S-2A's paid the real dividend, thus after the field was
cut to the six hi gh-scorers and the target time reduced to 2m15s for the
second tranche, and then
again cut to the top three and the target slimmed even further to 2m10s for
the top-3 shoot-out,
Alan Cassidy made sure that the glinty gold medal and snazzy T-shirt was all
his, Brian McCartney in MAXG scooping the silver and that popular man-of-the-day Alex
Cartwright back again with KITI for the bronze.
While we had hoped for a veritable flood to Pitts'es from all round the UK
vying for the Concours top slots, in reality the aviation media didn't
quite spread spread the news as we had intended and thus just one local S-1C
and a single visiting S-2A made up the field. With a searching list of ten
criteria to work with, judges
Bob Pooler (Sleap's resident CFI) and event Chief Judge Peter Macintosh
swiftly assembled their marks; at the fi nal count, so close were the
top two identical 87.5% scores
that it took the 9.0 "Wow factor" awarded to G-OWAZ and local man
Paul Latham to edge
ahead of the ever hard-working G-MAXG (sadly with only 8.5 in the "Wow" department) for
the top slot, then Neil Parkinson's lovely G-FORZ at 82.5% trouncing the
rest at third. A
fitting end indeed to a surprisingly well enjoyed weekend.
Huge thanks as usual to the bunch of hard-working peeps who make all this
stuff happen, thumbs-up to Sleap's brilliant operation - especially the café
grub, and much appreciation by us all of the pilots, the flying and general
excellence of the whole weekend. Roll-on 2015 then! |
| Pitts Unknown
Sequence Results |
|
Pitts Special Event, Sleap, 5th - 6th July 2014 |
|
Ranked by percent
|
| Rank |
M/F |
Level |
Pilot |
Aeroplane |
Registration |
Unknown |
Unk'n #2 |
Totals |
O/all % |
| 1 |
M |
STD |
Alex Cartwright |
Pitts S-2E |
G-KITI |
965.22 |
1042.08 |
2007.30 |
77.802 |
2 |
M |
STD |
Aidan Smith |
Pitts S-2E |
G-KITI |
932.12 |
1030.89 |
1963.01 |
76.086 |
3 |
M |
ADV |
Alan Cassidy |
Pitts S-2A |
G-ODDS |
2133.18 |
1990.96 |
4124.14 |
75.811 |
4 |
M |
STD |
Simon Hampton |
Pitts S-1S |
G-MAXG |
976.93 |
943.97 |
1920.90 |
74.454 |
5 |
M |
ADV |
Julian Murfitt |
Pitts S-1S |
G-BXTI |
1993.09 |
1913.97 |
3907.06 |
71.821 |
H/C |
F |
STD |
Victoria Wicks |
Pitts S-2B |
G-ICAS |
929.58 |
902.97 |
1832.55 |
71.029 |
6 |
M |
STD |
Marc Amey |
Pitts S-1S |
G-MAXG |
871.62 |
940.92 |
1812.54 |
70.253 |
7 |
M |
INT |
Richard Welch |
Pitts S-1S |
G-WIGY |
1336.33 |
1396.88 |
2733.21 |
69.371 |
8 |
M |
ADV |
Brian McCartney |
Pitts S-1S |
G-MAXG |
1719.36 |
1969.86 |
3689.22 |
67.817 |
9 |
M |
INT |
Neil Parkinson |
Pitts S-1T |
G-FORZ |
1375.67 |
1276.00 |
2651.67 |
67.301 |
10 |
M |
ADV |
Cas Smith |
Pitts S-2A |
G-ICAS |
1909.41 |
1628.48 |
3537.89 |
65.035 |
 |
| Contest Director: Nick Buckenham, Contest Chief Judge: Peter Macintosh, Scoring Director: Jen Buckenham. Judges: Peter Macintosh, Ian Scott, Phil Burgess, Eric Marsh. Judges Assistants: Leif Culpin, Julie Wood, Paul Stanley, George Haye. |
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FairPlay System |
Aerobatic Contest Results Organiser, Version 3.3 Build 05-07-14, with FairPlay Scoring System |
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| Open Known timed sequence -
Final top three pilots ... |
|
Pitts Special Event, Sleap, 5th - 6th July 2014 |
|
Ranked by scores
|
| Rank |
M/F |
Pilot |
Time |
Aeroplane |
Registration |
Known 3 |
Totals |
O/all % |
| 1 |
M |
Alan Cassidy |
2m12s |
Pitts S-2A |
G-ODDS |
1187.07 |
1187.07 |
87.931 |
2 |
M |
Brian McCartney |
2m07s |
Pitts S-1S |
G-MAXG |
1144.98 |
1144.98 |
84.813 |
3 |
M |
Alex Cartwright |
2m07s |
Pitts S-2E |
G-KITI |
1131.94 |
1131.94 |
83.847 |
|
| Contest Director: Nick Buckenham, Contest Chief Judge: Peter Macintosh, Scoring Director: Jen Buckenham. Judges: Peter Macintosh, Ian Scott, Phil Burgess, Eric Marsh. Judges Assistants: Leif Culpin, Julie Wood, Diane Smith, John Vize. |
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FairPlay System |
Aerobatic Contest Results Organiser, Version 3.3 Build 05-07-14, with FairPlay Scoring System |
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