The weekend of 15/16th August saw Sywell play host to Round 5 of the 2009 British Air Racing Championship, with both the Stewards' Cup and the King's Cup trophies up for grabs.
Handicapped air racing has been taking place almost as long as manned flight itself, but rather bizarrely the whole concept of the Royal Aero Club was actually borne out of a proposed motor tour in 1901. After the Renault 4.5 belonging to one of the participants, Vera Butler, caught on fire, a balloon flight was planned with the professional Stanley Spencer instead, and it was during this flight that it was decided that an Aero Club should be formed.
The arrival of heavier than air flight was greeted with great excitement by the Club and following contact between Charles Rolls, the Short brothers - the Club's balloon-makers - and Wilbur and Orville Wright, the first aircraft production line in the world was setup at Leysdown following the acquisition of a Wright license.
In fact, in those early days the importance the Club played in taking aviation forward cannot be underestimated, with its membership including countless military aviators, with many more being trained prior to military schools taking over the role in 1915.
Having been granted the 'Royal' prefix, the Club began issuing internationally accepted Aviators' Certificates in 1910, recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). With that came the responsibility for the control of all private and sport flying in the UK, as well as records and competitions; through the Aviation Council that role is still fulfilled to this day.
In 1922, King George V offered the King's Cup as an incentive for the development of British light aircraft and engine design. To this day the race bearing its name is still held in the highest regard among those involved with the sport.
3Rs air races generally comprise of four laps of a roughly 24-mile course, and typically out in the country pilots will be limited to a minimum of 500ft AGL, but that can and does vary from location to location. In areas where large numbers of noise complaints have been received this figure rises to 700ft, but on the run to the finish line participants are cleared down to 100ft - it used to be 70.
And so, the morning of Sunday 16th August 2009 started pleasantly enough, albeit with a 20kt wind from a heading of 230. On the grass at Sywell lay the aircraft belonging to the twelve pilots who would be competing for the King's Cup later in the day, with all manner of types stretching from the high-wing, single engined Cessna 172 through to the twin Beechcraft Baron present.
Undoubtedly, for me at least, the most interesting aircraft present was SIAI-Marchetti SF-260W Warrior, G-NRRA/BF8431, known among the air racing community as "Race 31", still resplendent in its former operator's colours, the Burkina Faso Air Force! The aircraft is the charge of the current 3Rs Chairman, Geoffrey Boot.
Unlike the Red Bull Series where everyone's competing against the clock, the 3Rs Series actually sees all participants in the air together, and assuming the handicapper has done a good job, should result in a significant number of the competitors hitting the finish line within a matter of seconds of one another.
John Swain, commentator for the event, explained to me about the changes currently taking place in the way competitors are handicapped.
"As far as the Royal Aero Club is concerned, the Air Racing side of things is an evolving sport. We're moving into technical fields, huge leaps and bounds as far as computer programming and GPS is concerned - stuff that you can extract from GPS data - and it's causing some teething problems; we're probably making it a bit too complicated in what we're trying to achieve.
"In the old days we used to just declare a speed, go out and race our aeroplanes and if you bust that speed more than once you'd get disqualified, so it was in your best interests to get it right. The next time you might declare a little bit faster so that you wouldn't get disqualified.
"What we do now, we fly octagons. What that means is we go up and fly an eight-sided area for 30 seconds on each side and the GPS data from that is examined and that's how they formulate the speed of the aircraft. That information's then used to produce a start time at which they go off and race. There's always conjecture with this and there are technical reasons about why people complain about the results and the way it's unfolding, but we're gradually resolving this by making it less technical, so there's less things to have to look at and it's more about skill because the whole thing about air racing is how you fly your aeroplane."
The first, and by definition slowest, aircraft to get airborne was Rex Levi's Grumman AA1B G-BERY, while the last and fastest was Peter Earp and his Beechcraft Baron G-DAFY, some 25m 49s later. Some of the departures were pretty sporty, with the right hand turns being executed a matter of feet above the ground, before returning back through the Sywell overhead some minutes later, turning left and joining the 'circuit' proper.
As it turned out, the King's Cup air race was a perfect case in point of the current evolution running through the sport, with officials unable to declare a result on the day due to a 'software issue', despite it seemingly being quite clear to those present that Vans RV-4 G-TNGO, crewed by Richard and Tom Marsden were first across the line, ahead of Peter Earp's Beech Baron (who'd claimed the Stewards' Cup the previous day).
This was eventually resolved later the following week when all of the relevant manually observed data had been checked and cross-checked, and the Marsdens were indeed crowned 2009 King's Cup Air Race winners.
John Swain openly admitted to me that, "Sywell probably wasn't the best weekend of air racing, but we're confident that next season will be fantastic.
"Some of our races have as many as thirty aircraft taking part and the finish of those can be hugely exciting!"
GAR wants to interact with its readers so if you have a question for the author or a comment to make on this feature, please click on the button below. The best comments will appear right here on GAR.2011-08-26 - Neilsen
I am doing some research into the Kings Cup Air Races up to and including the 1950's and need photos/movies. A neighbour used to take part in these and won some. Where can I get more information?
Thanks
2009-09-07 - Pete Chilcott
It's great to see our sport getting some publicity elsewhere. Come and join us for a race - you may like it!
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