IAC 52/58 Wildwood Kathy Jaffe Contest

In an attempt to finish 2020 with some semblance of hope going forward, IAC chapters 52 and 58 made a late commitment to host a contest this past weekend. Initial commitments were in the mid 20's with 22 pilots attending the day of the contest.

Practice flights were flown on Friday and a full day of contest flights were flown on Saturday with everybody getting two opportunities to call the box their own for a few minutes. Most everyone opted to bolt for home Saturday evening or Sunday morning with the weather forecasted to deteriorate by Sunday midday.

There were four Super Decathlons entered in Sportsman and Intermediate. I haven't checked the results yet but they appeared to be well flown. A Citabria or Decathlon being skillfully manipulated at a contest is very much appreciated by those watching below! It takes effort!

I wasn't so lucky to be able to compete. It would have been my first contest and I was scrambling to prepare after writing off the season and not really making a serious effort to practice. Just days prior I went looking for the source of oil droplets on the cabin floor and found my tachometer cable seal was leaking. the local shop didn't have the tool so a quick fix wasn't possible and the leaky #2 exhaust flange was also on my mind so I scrubbed the plane and myself for the weekend. Volunteering at contests is a lot of fun so I drove down to Wildwood County Airport near the southern tip of New Jersey and made the best of it.

Here's the part where I recommend you give it a try. They always need volunteers and no experience is necessary to reach out and offer to lend a hand the day, or days, of the contest. Most contest directors appreciate that contests don't happen without volunteers and will usually offer up a free t-shirt as a thank you. It's also a great opportunity to size up if an aerobatic contest is something you want to try (provided you get instruction first before trying the maneuvers by yourself).

A few pics to help the dopamine flow!

Thanks, for the PIREP. Sorry I missed it.

I love the colors on 4SC, even if they are from the "other"school.
I really should volunteer at an IAC event as you suggest too.

Not a Citabria or Decathlon but a supremely restored Super Chipmunk that was recently highlighted in the IAC magazine. The photo below was pirated off the internet since I didn't get one last weekend. I spoke to owner Mark Meredith and overtly drooled all over it in his presence. He flew it in Sportsman and did a really nice job taking 3rd place for the contest. It's like a vision from the past seeing a Super Chipmunk flying a sequence right there in front of you.

in case anyone's curious, here are the contest results. worth noting, a Super Decathlon placed 2nd in Sportsman and 5th in Intermediate. The guy flying the Pitts S1-C in Sportsman did a great job and the win was well deserved.

Good stuff. I definitely encourage anyone curious to go check out a contest. Then make the next step and enter. The local contest folks are VERY helpful and encouraging towards new competitors.

I never saw more than 2 Decathlons at a contest. I think we got a bit of a scoring bonus just for being willing to give it a shot.

This got me reminiscing, so I searched for the results of my last contest. See below. A few notes:

1. I would have placed in top 3, but I totally botched the half cloverleaf on my first flight. I did not get a practice flight at the airfield because we were running out of time. It was one of those old WWII triangular bomber fields. When I looked for my linear reference halfway thru the cloverleaf, I got misoriented by the other runway and came out 90 degrees off heading. Had to break and exit the box. Very irritating. Did fine on second run. I had just never seen the runway pattern from the air.

2. Note the T-28 who flew Sportsman. You should have seen that.

3. Two friends of mine listed in Intermediate died in the next few years. One tried to become an airshow pilot and was killed giving an acro ride to a 17 year old kid. The other tried to become a Reno air race pilot and was killed in a qualifying flight when her wings separated in flight.

Ed,

You knew Erica? That was very sad. She flew in the IAC 52 contests with her S2S so I ran into her a few times when I was volunteering maybe ten or twelve years ago.

Yes, we were friends. It was very sad. The end of her first marriage a few years earlier was hard for her, but she had come thru it and her future was bright in many ways. All over in an instant. BTW, you will see her name variously given as Anderson, Hoagland, or Simpson, depending on timing.




Paul Lopez was even sadder. Took a high school senior with him.

https://www.theledger.com/article/LK/20090310/News/608131492/LL


Here is his spectacular Cox Pitts S-1T, which he traded in for the MX2 that he died in.



Jon Wood was a good friend of mine also. He was my first aerobatics mentor. My initial 5 hours of training was terrible. Jon took me under his wing and taught me how to fly proper aerobatic figures in 2000. He was killed in 2003.




Three young aerobatic pilots, all gone too soon.

I knew her as Erica Hoagland, also as Simpson. The number of people that get killed doing acro freaks me out but GA flying in general has more of that than we should be willing to accept. Don't know what the answer is but I'm always thinking about where I'm messing up to try to keep myself safe. If I ever say I'm considering airshow flying, just shoot me.

That Cox Pitts is cool as hell.

Paul and Jon both died trying to rush the process, IMO. They wanted to be airshow pilots, but did not want to put in their competition dues. So they bought unlimited-class monoplanes and began working on their low level waivers, without having proven mastery of those aircraft by winning in unlimited contests. Both of them died after inadvertant spins at altitudes too low to recover.

Air racing is several orders of magnitude more dangerous than aerobatics, so I don't think we can draw any conclusions from Erica's death.