A visitor with stature

We are getting many visitors to fly at Worcester but it is not everyday that we get someone like Mark Holiday. (After all his crew at international contests, Daniel Perry was on the famous Nationwide flight that did not quite get to leave Cape Town).
Mark was also just awarded the Aero Club’s Lewis Lang Award as Pilot of the Year – this trophy is awarded annually by the Aero Club to the pilot (could be from any one of the various sections) that the Aero Club consider as having proved to be the “pilot of the year”.
The Soaring Society of SA nominated Mark as having not only won the 15m class at the Gauteng Regionals but also for winning the South African held qualifying Grand Prix. Mark was competing against some of the world’s best pilots including World Champions. Mark - very well done and well deserved.

Mark visited us in late November in preparation for the GP in New Zealand - his flew 620 km at some 132kph in a Twin Astir - a remarkable flight (it is on OLC)
Mark sent me this article (which will appear in our club mag Kraut Koerant, and I am sure elsewhere)

He wrote as follows:

" Seven Hours at Worcester

I felt that part of my preparation for the World GP final to be held at Omarama, New Zealand in December 2007 would be to feel comfortable when running and thermalling close to the rocks. I had spent useful time at the Drakesberg, following Peter Rhia and Mike Barenbrug, and developed a strong admiration for how easily and unceremoniously they stalked and transitioned into wave, but I still returned after a week without a feeling of confidence when flying close to the mountains and generally came away pretty disillusioned about my prospects in NZ.
My strategy was to spend a week at Omarama prior to the official practise days both acclimatising and orienting myself to their mountain conditions. True to form, this week was washed out, as was the first practise day. Thank goodness Sven Olivier had talked me into a training session with Martin Grunert, Worcester’s mountain Guru who apparently had some interesting ridge running techniques at high speed.
With only two weeks to go before I left for NZ, I phoned Sven and asked him to set it up. His weather forecasting skills were stretched to the maximum when he predicted on Monday that Sunday would be good, enabling me to book a flight just before my old crew Daniel Perry dropped his engine at Cape Town International, creating a shortage of seats countrywide. A flurry of Worcester e-mails resulted in them generously making ZS-GOK available for the day.
Sunday dawned early for me and Martin collected me from the airport at 9.30 am. You can imagine my surprise to find GOK ready to fly when I arrived; who said that the Cape wasn’t hospitable?
We took off at 11.45 and Martin quickly predicted that the tug’s route would take us into sink in about 2 minutes. This was my first of many lessons that day in anticipating the ground’s effect on the wind. Martin took the controls after release and we gradually climbed next to the steep mountain edges aiming for the apex of the valley. With what seemed only just enough height we hopped across into an area of inhospitable terrain for about 20 km. I grew a few more grey hairs as we transitioned to the main North –South ridge, which in retrospect was easy and safe, but the entire subsequent flight plagued me with niggling thoughts on how we were going to return by ascending through that pass.
Descending onto the ridge at high speed we smoothly (actually turbulently) stayed right over it, following the undulations in the maximum energy band. It seemed easy, especially as the glider was so responsive at 160- 200 kph. I couldn’t maintain Martin’s speed due to his different flying style which was busy with a lot of minor corrections as opposed to my style where there is usually a paucity of control inputs. He patiently coached me, allowing me to get us into trouble and then taking over when we dropped too far below the ridge crest. We soon arrived at our first turnpoint, Renosterhoek. Our next turnpoint, the N1 tunnel soon appeared, and we beat the same path back again which was excellent training, fewer mistakes this time and I was really starting to enjoy myself.
The next training exercise was to transition across valleys and it felt so slow thermalling for the first time in over two hours having covered 380 km. Thermic activity was hampered by unexpected high cirrus and we decided not to traverse too far inland, returning to the main ridge. To my relief we didn’t return via the pass, and effortlessly returned to the airfield to finish with a bit of training to refine my mountain technique.
A quick beer at the club and then to the airport for the 7pm flight home, it didn’t seem possible that I had boarded the plane in Joburg only 12 hours ago.
It took me about two days to digest all the lessons learnt: stay in the hot zone even if it means following the ridges down, anticipate climbs well in advance, always know the wind direction, go wide around breaches, seatbelt tight and respect the Flarm because closing speeds were often around 400 kph.
Despite my initial anxieties, at no time did I feel we were too close or dangerous. The high speeds and manoeuvrability may have contributed to that and it didn’t take long before we were howling Hee-Hahs every time we felt a surge. What a ride, what a day, we flew 620 km at 132 kph and that included the training manoeuvres!! Do yourself a favour and go to Worcester this summer. I promise you that you will never think of the Twin Astir in the same light again.

Mark Holliday"


Apparently there is some video footage of the flight - once i have it, i will post it.

All for now

EY