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The
first Artistic Aerobatics competition
 Introduction
Since the Artistic Aerobatics competition class was adopted at
the March 2001 CIAM Plenary meeting, one could not expect competitions
to appear immediately. I am very much indebted to Pascal Blauel
and his Romilly club members for their support in organising this
inaugural Artistic Aerobatics invitational international competition.
It was to take place during the famous F3A Tournoi de Champagne
(Champagne Tournament), presumably the largest international F3A
pattern competition outside World and Continental Championships.
The 56 entries were responsible for the switch from a 2-days to
a 3-days contest. The Artistic Aerobatics event was to take place
during the judge's rest breaks. It was to be an aeroplane event
with Remi Epron (France), one of the 3-D top pilots, to fly helicopter.
Due to the restricted time available
and the fact that many pilots were still unprepared, the A-A entry
was to be by invitation only. Early on, it was decided to limit
the number of pilots to 7, among them F3A World Champion, TOC
& IAM Winner Christophe
Paysant-Le Roux
from France and double TOC Winner Quique
Somenzini
from Argentina.
Early in the preparation stage Roland
Matt from Liechtenstein had to decline due to work pressure. The
same happened later for Bernhard Schaden (Switzerland) and, a
mere 7 days before the event, to Marc Foucher (France). Finally
the entry was down to 5 with Marco Benincasa (Italy), the 2000
F3A European Championship 3rd placer and a 1999 TOC competitor,
Benoit Dierickx (Belgium), a large scale aerobatics specialist
and Stephane
Carrier
(France), the 14-year young pilot who stunned everybody with his
free style flying at the IAM in Japan and at the 2000 TOC in Las
Vegas. All top pilots indeed.
 I
arrived at Romilly, a small city in the French Champagne area,
on the day preceding the competition. Many pilots were already
training for F3A. Christophe Paysant-Le Roux was there already
with a brand new F3A plane(Synergy)
and his faithful Majestic he had used at the last two IAM competitions
in Japan. Quique Somenzini was there too with wife Sandra; he
came to France to collect his new competition planes at the PL
Prod factory. His AA plane was the Excellence IAM, the 3D version
of the regular F3A Excellence, the one he flew at the 2000 IAM
in Japan and that he showed on many occasions in the US, lately
at the Joe Nall Masters.
The weather forecast kept saying
Friday was to be cloudy and wet, and conditions were to improve
steadily until the end of the week. As the big F3A Tournament
had absolute priority, things did not seem too promising.
 During
the afternoon Marco Benincasa arrived from Italy, a 10-hour drive!
Due to the prevailing bad weather his Majestic had only 4 flights
and he had no music ready, he just brought bits and pieces from
what he had used already at the TOC. Happily I had the necessary
software (Cool Edit from Syntrillium)
and a few CDs of prepared samples of all styles, so I quickly
recorded his songs on computer. He chose a suitable song to his
liking and I proceeded assembling the various pieces into a 2-minute
freestyle and a 4-minute freestyle music.
Christophe Paysant-Le Roux, too,
had some problems when he discovered the CD case with his music
(the one he used to win the TOC) was empty! After some research,
he uncovered his emergency cassette tape but the recording had
some blank parts, so back to the computer, recording the damaged
song. Then some quick surgery on the multi-track part of Cool
Edit enabled me producing a repaired song, which I then modified
a little bit by reducing the dynamic range and increasing the
level of the softest parts. This is how spectators can hear the
music, not the engine, all through the flight. It remained to
burn a CD and Christophe was ready.
A heavy shower concluded the day
and we all hoped the predicted bad weather for the next day would
not materialise.
Day 1 - Friday 8
The day dawned grey and misty. It
had rained most of the night. Upon arriving on the field, I found
the rain was light enough not to prevent flying. Most pilots are
using transmitter tray and they were fitted with clear hood, a
standard feature with European transmitters, protecting primarily
from wind and cold, but also from rain if needed. Nothing is worse
than water dripping into a transmitter through the stick and trim
openings!
Well, to put it short, it was flyable but we discovered immediately
that the ceiling was about half what was needed to fly. Waited
further until a test flight showed the cloud base was not high
enough for safe flying. We were already past 1:30 p.m.
From this point on, it was trying to pack 53 pattern flights on
one flight line before dusk. Needless to say, we didn't even think
having the Preliminary round of Artistic Aerobatics on that day!
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