Jet World Masters Report - Tuesday August 25

Hallo (German for hello) and Hallo (Dutch for hello) from Leutkirch and the second competition day of the 11th Jet World Masters.

Sorry about the short report yesterday; I was dead tired. I fell asleep while the photos were uploading and only pressed when I woke up this morning.
OK, there is lots of news so let’s get to it.

The other night I stopped by McDonalds (going again tonight - I love me that McWiFi) and afterwards I gassed up the car at the service station next door.
This proved somewhat problematic. The pumps seemed new and modern, but I couldn’t find the slot for the credit card anywhere. I had a flashback to my Renault start card problem, but at least my credit card is silver, the pump is white, and the area was well lit.
Couldn’t find it anywhere. So I asked a local who only spoke German. Hand signals didn’t work so I tried the old American trick of speaking slower and LOUDER, and that worked quite nicely! He pointed for me to go inside. Per the cashier, you simply gas up your car and then go inside and pay for the gas.
Wow, talk about a blast from the past. That would never work in 21st century America.

After I paid for the gas, I thought it might be a good idea to get rid of some of the German beer that I’d “rented” earlier as it was a half hour drive back to the hotel. The rest room entrance was blocked by a turnstile demanding .50 Euros.
No problem, I’ll pay. I put in the coin and it gave me a receipt. Not only was it a receipt, but it was a very nice receipt, complete with an anti-counterfeiting holographic strip.
Why would anyone want a receipt for the bathroom? An expense claim, maybe? I work for a multi-national aerospace firm with quite the interesting set of corporate rules, but if you need a .50 Euro receipt to the crapper, your company is way too anal.

So I went back to the hotel, wrote a short note, and crashed. Hard.
I woke up this morning, had a quick breakfast, and it was off to the field early as Andy had his “trim” flight window just before the scheduled flying was to occur.
As you may recall from an earlier report, Andy suffered an engine failure after take off during his practice flight on Saturday. The turbine was replaced with a smaller unit, and folks from several countries helped Andy repair the damage from the emergency landing.
We started up the jet, taxied out, and took off. It was called a “trim” flight and we were not allowed to fly the routine or any of his scored maneuvers.
Well that doesn’t make any sense, both take-off and landing are scored maneuvers. We decided to compromise and not fly any other maneuvers….except the victory roll. This maneuver had the most vertical of his optional maneuvers so I suggested he fly it for SAFETY reasons (yes, I disobeyed in the interest of safety).
He did the roll on the 45 degree upline, extended and pushed level (the IJMC version of the maneuver would have him extend, half roll to inverted, pull to level, and half roll upright.
Well, some of the event staff went crazy and started screaming like some German version of Chicken Little. Uh oh, international incident!!!!
Like that was my first, yeah. Ask me sometime about when I almost got beheaded in Morocco.
Fortunately David Tappin, a gentleman and fellow subject of Her Majesty (I’m Canadian in case you didn’t get the memo) rose above it all and declared, as Chief Flight Judge, that we did not complete the maneuver and therefore it was just fine. Well, not since the 1966 World Cup final were the Germans more soundly defeated by a Brit.
By the way, the flight went fine and we were back in the game. Many thanks to the many competitors from several countries who helped.
To the rest, screw you. Actually, that’s not fair; all of the countries were involved in helping Andy….read on.

Scott Harris had his first round flight this at 9:39am with David Ribbe calling. Scott told the judges that he was going to fly “combat style”.
I’m not sure what that meant, and I doubt the judges did either, but it sounded great. I hope it meant fast. Scott flew that BVM Sabre like it was on rails.
He had to fly through the sun just before rolling inverted for the combination Immelman/Split-S. Though temporarily blinded, the muscle memory took over, and the Sabre reappeared at the base of the half loop and on the right heading. The mark of a ScaleMasters Champion!

Andy was up next at 11:43am (German punctuality… a schedule is a schedule). He briefed the judges (let’s kick the tires and lit the fires), and we got to it.
The first start attempt sounded anemic and eventually timed out. The second attempt sounded about the same but was accompanied by smoke and a nasty smell.
We hit the bird with some CO2, shut off the power, and found that the ECU had fried.
Yep, electronics don’t work if you let out the magic smoke. I pulled the ECU, showed it to the judges, and told them that we were done for the time being.
So now we really had our work cut out for us. Andy and crew set to work replacing the ECU and melted starter cable and I set to work doing the manager political thing. I wanted to get Andy a restart at the end of the round 1 flights. I spoke to each of the managers of the teams, showed them the ECU where it was obvious that this was a technical failure of a newly installed component and was not due to pilot error or poor maintenance.
All team managers were supportive and agreed, as did the JWM President, and the Chief Flight Judge. I was patting myself on the back for obtaining such unanimous international agreement but I later discovered that several teams had technical problems in the first round and wanted restarts for their pilots.
Allowing Andy a restart simply opened the floodgates. These Europeans are tricky; you need to watch them.

Speaking of Europeans, I took the opportunity to sample some of the “roach coaches” set up around the main venues.
My favorite so far (other than the beer) is the crepe vendor who has quite the long lineup. Apparently Germans love French crepes (I guess that’s why they keep invading) and I had a banana and Shocososse (banana and chocolate). It was then folded up, sort of like a quesadilla, and put into a paper funnel cup. Yumm!

Back to the flight line…..a couple of planes really caught my eye.
The folks from Luxemburg had a turbine powered Fantrainer complete with homemade carbon fibre fan and gearbox. The sound was awesome.

The Russians brought a new Mini-YAK-130 in 13.5Kg class (29.7 lbs) that was the little brother of Vitaly’s YAK in the 20Kg class. It had all the detail of the big brother and I’m just amazed that it is as light as it is. Quite the accomplishment.

Bert Hazeborg (former judge and now Dutch competitor) had a Mick Reeves Javelin. It is rare subject and looked great as Bert had obviously put in the hours on this project. Marco (emergency tent provider and power supply fixer) is his caller. The plane had wheel/tire issues on the first flight attempt and was granted a restart. That didn’t go so well, as it stalled and crashed on takeoff, which was a real shame as Bert is such a great guy.

One of the interesting coincidences of the event is that the Russian and US Teams are sequential in the start order and are flying models of the same full scale aircrafts. There are Russian and American models of the MiG-15 and of the F-15 that were static judged side by each.
One of the competitors proclaimed this must be because Americans like Russian planes and Russians like American planes. I informed the lunatic that Americans and Russians simply like the number 15.

David was scheduled to static while Scott was scheduled to fly. Normally this would only be a problem for me as I need to be in both places as team manager. However, it this case, David was Scott’s caller/helper and vice-versa. I did a bit more politicking, and the scheduling conflict was resolved. David’s static judging went off without a hitch (once a verboten too-large photographed was surgically reduced) and, as previously stated, Scott’s flight went fabulously.
Jason’s F-15 was also static judged and we are all interested in how it will do with the recent additional details and weathering Jason has added.

During a break in the compeition, a few flight demonstrations were performed with non-competition aircraft. There was an absolutely immense Rafale powered by twin BF300 turbines. Definitely a trailer is required to get this bad boy to the field. A semi.

Andy and I took a break to have a lunch of German bratwurst. The food was good, but it was the condiment dispenser that caught my eye. It has three squeezable “udders” that dispense ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. I’ve taken to calling it the “condiment cow”.

Another nickname belongs to a member of the flightline crew who is very intense, does a lot of shouting in German, and doesn’t seem to be very happy. He’s becoming known at das flugfuhrer (the flight Fuhrer).

The first round of flights was completed at about 3pm and the second round commenced after a short break.
Rod, who is 9th in the starting order, laid down a great flight of his MiG-15, and was positively gitty for the rest of the day and evening.
Chad and Rod have a tradition that when their flying is over, they partake in a cocktail. Frankly this seems to blow Scott and David’s tradition (buying each other an ice cream) right out of the water.

Once the scheduled flights were completed, the restarts were given their turn and Andy finally got to fly. The engine had some startup issues, but David Ribbe saved the day by choking off the turbine (allowing the temperature to reach minimum) and the ECU allowed the fuel ramp. We buttoned up the plane, and off we went into the wild blue yonder. Andy received lots of cheers from the crowd of competitors who came out to watch knowing all the troubles he’d had and all the effort he put in to continue.
The flight went great. We defueled the plane (but kept the UAT full since I was sure we would be under the 20Kg limit) and headed over for the official weighing. Yep, 19.92 kg. We were under by about 3 oz so the flight was official and in the books.

This evening was Nation’s Night, where all the teams present the organizers with gifts and a bottle of your country’s booze which is then made available for sampling by the competitors. As team manager, I have to make the presentation speech.
We were giving a bottle of Jack so I held up the bottle and started with “Greetings from Lynchburg, Tennessee” and received cheers from the crowd. I figured that things could only get worse from there so I kept it short and sweet, handed over the beer glasses (engraved with USAF pilot wings like our team shirts) and left the stage before they could even hand me our gift of German booze/lighter fluid.
I had to go back, thanked them for the gift, and quickly left the stage (to keep an eye on the JD).

There was a band, a party, etc, but I had to write this report so I only stayed briefly at the party. I spent the latter part of the evening writing in New Amsterdam and then headed back to the hotel to do the upload (McDonalds closes at 1am during the week).

Regards,

Jim