When Mark Jefferies invited me along to meet Team GB on Friday morning, I'll happily admit to knowing the thick end of nothing about competition aerobatics, and I guess the same probably applies to many of you reading this.
Aside from the odd act on the airshow circuit, Mark himself included, it's not something those of us on the outside have much exposure to, so over the course of the next three weeks I'll aim to explain the basics of competition flying, to introduce the team and their aircraft to you and to chart their progress in the competition itself.
Where to begin? I guess some definitions would be a good starting point, and 'the figure' is as good a place as any. A figure is simply a particular element of a routine, or a 'sequence', as it's more correctly known.
The area in which the aerobatic sequence is flown is called 'the box'. It's generally set 100m above ground level and is essentially a 1km cube. Visual references are laid out on the ground to assist pilots in keeping within its boundaries.
Judges are used to rate the pilots. Mark explains the scoring process: "The scoring is done using a particular formula. Each figure is scored out of ten points, then you get deductions for errors, half a point for every five degrees of over-rotation on a roll, for example, so you just start with the ten before you take off, and then they count the errors during the figure, and just deduct that from the ten you start with and you end up with your score. Then the whole sequence is given a score for positioning; was it in the right place in the sky?"
To put that into some sort of context, Mark's Extra 330 is capable of 420 degrees of roll per second.
"Doing the maths, if you assume 360 degrees rate of roll per second, 5 degrees equals one seventy-second of a second, so your hand/eye has to work that quick otherwise it's points off! You can react to those sorts of roll rates and stop where you want pretty well. It is something you do so often that you become very familiar with it."
To the uninitiated, ie me, it's all very hard to comprehend…
The Extra 330 is rated up to +/- 10G. I wonder how close Mark takes the aircraft to that during a typical sequence?
"I'm flying typically to +7.5G and -6G. In my freestyle, for example, I've got fractions of a second where I'm going from +7 to -5G. When I say fractions of a second it's just that, not even half a second."
I know from Gareth's interview with 2009 Royal Air Force Typhoon Display Pilot, Sqn Ldr Scott Loughran, that the biggest 'swing' during his display is from -1.5G to +9G, and that's with a G-suit on, so how does Mark go about coping with that unaided, as it were?
"Sometimes you don't!" Mark jokes.
"Joking aside, you cope by doing straining exercises. I've got very strong stomach muscles, you tense your stomach so much - he'll be doing that as well - and breathing exercises; it's all about trying to keep the blood in your brain to keep you conscious.
"It is particularly difficult if you go from a long time inverted, negative G, to a high positive G. That is the hardest, but in my case when I'm going from +7 to -5, it's only for a few milliseconds, half a second, say. The blood hasn't had the time to drain away. Length of exposure's the key thing."
I question whether people have an inherent ability to deal with extremes of G?
"I think we all start out the same way, a foot high, heart in our chest. Blood pressure is blood pressure, 120 over 80, or whatever it is. I do have the ability to increase my blood pressure to 140 in about a second, which is what stops me from greying out. It's all about physical training."
Occasionally the judges and the pilots do not see eye to eye and so technology is called upon to assist in a final ruling.
"All flights are videoed for the purpose of checking for an error if there's a protest. If somebody gets a zero, the judges might think he rotated the wrong way, for example, but the pilot thinks 'No, it was in the correct direction', the video is there to verify that the flight was flown to the written sequence - it's not there for scores to be given at a later date."
I wonder if anyone can be a judge or if it's essential to be a competent aerobatic pilot yourself?
"No, not necessarily. Judges can come from almost all walks of life and be trained through attending a lot of competitions, and there are judging schools run throughout the UK every spring. The judge can cut his teeth on the beginners, the standards, intermediates and advanced competitions, and then once he's done quite a few and has proved that he can judge accurately - because there is judge analysis software associated with the scoring software, to check that the judge is actually performing properly - and if he hits all of the criteria he'll then go and do international competitions, initially as a judges' assistant, and then as a fully fledged judge."
They're the basics. There are some nuances for the WAC which we'll explore next week. So what of Team GB itself?
David Cowden is the Team Manager and Company Secretary of both the British Aerobatic Association and the British Aerobatic Foundation. David doesn't get to fly in the competition itself.
Coaching the squad is Frenchman and 2000 World Aerobatic Champion, Eric Vazeille. Eric's been in the role to varying degrees since 2001.
There are five pilots competing in the Technical Competition: Tom Cassells - the current UK Champion, Gerald Cooper, Mark Jefferies, Kester Scrope and Nick Onn.
Last, but by no means least, there's Richard Pickin who's the Team's 'Warm-up Pilot' - More on that later.
It's fair to say that the 2009 effort has seen the most concerted training regime so far, as Mark explains: "Since February we've got together for three or four days at a time, every month, which is the most the British Team's ever done before, through the help of the British Aerobatic Foundation, run by Dave Cowden (Team GB's Manager), to raise money which has paid for the training - paid for Eric's time - and for half of the entry fee."
Nick's commitment to the cause is particularly impressive given that he now lives in Connecticut, on the other side of 'the Pond', and while the sponsorship has been most welcome, Nick has still had to finance his own airfares to attend the associated training sessions. He still plays it down.
"It's not very difficult. It's only over there - a six or seven hour flight. I'm not here for anything else, just to fly the aeroplane."
It's clear that there are some strong friendships within, and Tom talks particularly enthusiastically about Eric and how he became involved with Team GB:
"Eric's been training British pilots since 2001. I became friends with him in 2000 when he won, and he said then that he'd train me, which he's done; and he's not only trained me, he's trained the rest of the team as well. We did full team training in 2004 when we won the bronze team medal; he was involved with that; he trained us in 2005; he trained Gerald in 2006 for the Swiss gig; and he trained us again last year.
"Gerald and I were involved with Eric as a trainer before the Foundation so graciously helped the Team. Gerald and I were paying for it all ourselves before. In the past we'd get rid of £5K a piece over the course of a season for the trainer."
Gerald adds, "So it was a big commitment on our part, but if you want to get to the top then it's the only way to do it; you need to train regularly and continuously. The difference this year is that because of the involvement we've been getting, one or two other pilots have collected Foundation sponsorship and that means that the whole team is now training under the one trainer."
"Team Mazda have come on board as well and we're very, very happy with Mazda's sponsorship, and I think Mazda cars are really good!" Tom says in his broad Yorkshire accent, causing everyone sat around the table to laugh out loud.
"We would have been there anyway but it would've been more disjointed than it has in the past. This year because they've given the sponsorship to the pilots directly from the Foundation, and Mazda have supported the event, the Team and grass root aerobatics as well, it's meant that we can bring the team together more", Gerald comments.
And how were the team selected? Tom answers: "It was decided last year that those that had been to the Czech Republic would be selected for the Team, and then at the initial training camp this year, all those who wanted to be a part of it flew in front of Eric, and Eric made the selection along with other members of the (British Aerobatic) Foundation and Association."
Tom's keen to point out that Eric's involvement has already reaped the rewards.
"We had a team medal in 2004, we had two (individuals) in the top ten in 2007, and I was tenth in the Europeans last year, so if you take that snapshot between 2004 and 2008 you'll never have a string of successes like that unless you go back to the '70s."
"It's a very competitive team but what we've got now is strength in numbers. Last year in the Czech Republic the team would've picked up a bronze, but I made a mistake in a flight, and because there was nobody batting in fourth position to step in and pick up where I dropped down, it meant that the whole team dropped out of the running." Gerald very honestly admits.
"What happens now is that because we've got more pilots, if one of us drops the ball, then somebody else will be there to pick it up. The top three pilots from each team 'count' and their scores are aggregated to determine the team medals. That depth of pilots gives you strength and your National team strength."
So what are the prospects for 2009? I ask Mark: "Realistically, I think we're looking at a team bronze, possibly silver, a lot of it depends upon how the Russians perform. The Americans have got a good team, the Czechs have got a good team so…"
Gerald and Tom are keen to play it down, particularly so given their own experiences from the past.
"One small mistake and that's it, a year's training and everything else…" Gerald bemoans.
Tom jumps in, "…And then it takes you about six months to get over… I'm telling you. You make a big boo-boo in one of these jobs and the will to live will take six months to come back. I'm serious."
I don't doubt that.
Gerald goes on, "When you've spent a year of your time and effort and personal money, everything, getting to an event, funding the aeroplane, finding the time, you know, training, putting yourself through a lot of physical and emotional stress - obviously - and then by the time you get there, you go up, you have a beautiful flight and another good flight and then you'll make a tiny little fractional error that will just see you fall in the rankings, and that is it! It's a very, very unforgiving sport..."
So far we've only touched on team prospects. What of individual hopes for medals? I ask Gerald and Tom what they would need to achieve in order for them to consider the event a success:
"Winning it!" Tom exclaims, followed closely by a chuckle.
"I think everybody's got to move up, everybody wants to move up. Everybody's improving and you want to see your ranking improve, don't you? So, we're all trying to move up from our best finishes in the past, so that's 8th for me, 14th for Tom, Mark was 9th, Nick 18th… Someone in the top five's really what we need." Gerald explains.
What sort of margins are we talking here? How big's the gap between being a good aerobatic pilot and being a great one?
"They say that if you're in the top ten in the world you could've been World Champion. I don't quite concur with that. I came eighth in Spain in the Freestyle and ninth overall, and I don't feel I could've been World Champion. So I would say that if you're in the top six there's a possibility, because in the top six the scores are very close together." Mark tells me very humbly.
Tom talks numbers, "The top ten will be covered by 100 points out of a possible 12,000, so it is that close.
"If you drop a bollock on a figure, that can lose you 200 points; a low (dropping below the permitted minimum height) is 200, an 'out' (of the box) is 30. You get three outs and you're out of the top ten!
"Bye, bye! Have a nice day! Take up hockey!"
And how easy is it to find yourself outside the box I wonder?
"The box is a 1km cube and you're doing 200, 220 knots a lot of the time. There are visual references but you're being wind affected - moved by the wind - and the sequence is obviously moving you in a certain direction, it's not hard at all to end up outside it."
As mentioned earlier, another member of the team, who though not actually taking part in the competition itself is potentially very important to their collective prospects; Richard Pickin is the Team's 'warm-up pilot'. What exactly does that involve?
"Because the judging's subjective, very much like in ice skating, it's important that the judges are consistent, and the Chief Judge will be looking for any inconsistency in their scoring.
"Every morning the warm-up pilots - and there are at least two at this one - will fly, and the judges will score them. The Chief Judge will then look at the scores and decide whether one judge was a little bit higher or a little bit lower than the mean, and they'll have a debrief to try to make sure that everyone's singing from broadly the same hymn sheet.
"Because we're hosting the event we're obliged to supply a warm-up pilot and hopefully some other teams will bring one along as well.
"From the Team's point of view, what the warm-up pilots can do is, after the first flight of the day, if you happen to have a team member flying very quickly after - say within the next hour or so - the warm-up pilot can give that pilot information about the wind, if it's on-judge, off-judge, if it's different at height to at ground level, the visibility to the east is rubbish, the visibility to the north is excellent, etc, so you can actually help the team a lot.
"The Chief Judge will come up to me and say, there's a three of a four-point roll coming down, don't fly it, just fly three-quarters of the roll. So they'll be deliberately putting errors into check that the judges actually have their eyes open.
"He might also ask me to fly the low lines, so coming in at minimum height, giving wing rock, so that the judges can train their own eyes to see whether competitors are going to break the bottom of the box."
The final part of the puzzle, and arguably the most important is Team Coach, Eric Vazeille.
Due to work pressures (he's now a Boeing 777 pilot for Air France but was working for another, now defunct, carrier at the time) Eric ceased competing in the Technical Championships immediately after winning the 2000 WAC.
The obvious first question for me then is why he's here coaching Team GB and not in France looking after his 'own side'?
"It's a better challenge for me to create this team and get them ready. The French Team have been trained by the same man for a long, long time.
"I thought Tom and the other pilots had the potential to be in the top ten - it wasn't because they asked me - I didn't want to waste my time for nothing. I think they have a real chance of achieving that, and that's why I'm here.
"The British Team is now well known. We have a few pilots who've finished in the top ten, and people now know that the British are here and that they have to look at them because they will be a serious competitor."
And how's this change of allegiance been viewed 'back home'? Does Eric take plenty of flak for it?
"Not from aerobatic pilots because they understand it's not possible to train the French Team, but the French people who are not on the team, perhaps on other teams - there are quite a lot of them that are not the official team in France - they say, 'oh you are training the British, you are a bad boy! We are not going to speak to you any more. You are a traitor!' ", he says jokingly.
"They've divorced him!" quips Mark.
Rather amusingly Eric shares CAP232, registration G-OGBR, with Gerald and takes it to airshows in France, much to the consternation of many of his countrymen!
I ask Mark what is it that Eric brings to the table that makes him such a valuable asset: "Whenever we're in the air Eric watches us fly and he can see errors within milliseconds of control inputs. For example, if you're doing something as simple as moving the ailerons or elevator a little bit before you should be, he'll detect that from the ground. We'll be in radio contact. He's very, very knowledgeable and just gives you lots of tips in real-time."
Eric goes on, "The difference between a coach and a judge is that not only can you see the mistakes, you can also understand why. If you stay with me for one week, two weeks, you will start to see all the little mistakes. You won't understand why, but with a lot of experience that will come."
Who better to ask what it takes to win the gold medal than a man who's done just that?
"For individual pilots you have to be very good, you have to have a little bit of luck and you have to be ready on the day.
"I used to make mistakes during the training but not on the day. I hope they will do the same!
"It's twelve days, a long twelve days, and the champion will be the person who can manage his stress and his nerves - to cope with the pressure - and because we know that we could have bad weather," Eric laughs, "then we are not certain to fit in all three programmes for the full competition, they have to be prepared to be in the plane, to take off, 'ok, bad weather', landing, wait one, two hours, 'ok, the wind has changed', think about the wind… They have to be prepared for that. Because they are used to this kind of weather, I think they have an advantage."
Is Eric pleased with how the training's gone and where the Team are at?
"They are not fully ready yet. They are not ahead, but I am confident they will be ready on time. The last training session will be at Silverstone but you are not going to raise your level there. We're here at Sywell till the 17th.
"Kester Scrope is running a little bit late and he won't be joining us until tomorrow. Sometimes when you have not had a lot of training you can do a very good job because you have nothing to lose."
In next week's piece we'll focus on the specific elements of the WAC, talk to the pilots about their aircraft and discuss what might happen with the sport in the future.
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