Flying the Morning Glory Dust Devil Dash Hitting the Silk New ...

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The drive home from Elko. HU
On the finishers list, you only count 23 pilots. Apparently
Philippe Athuil, AS-H25Mi, had an emergency to deal with at work
and flew home.
Philippe is perhaps describable as Inspector Clouseau, sans
Cato. One day at Ely, Nevada he was about to launch solo in the
25 and he asked a few of us why nobody ever asked to get in the
back seat.
I responded “because you’re out of your mind.” He said, very
Clouseau, “I thought so”, closed the canopy and took off.
Philippe at Ely asking about the empty rear seat. V8
Results for this comp are on the following page.
October November 2009
Free Distance Competitions.
The English pilot and world champion Philip Wills was a great
believer in free distance flying. He felt strongly that the type of
flying done in comps like the Dust Devils Dash was in the true spirit
of gliding and brought back the fun to competitive flying.
“I recently wrote a book about gliding, titled “Free as a Bird”.
When I had finished it I realised that, over the past few years, the
pressures of international competition were towards lessening the
freedom and initiative of glider pilots. In modern championships the
pilot’s powers of deciding for himself when to take off, or when to
start or exactly where to fly have been taken over by the organiser
on the ground.
Types of flying requiring particular initiative and a particular
range of skills were and are being reduced. The more adventurous
and uncertain tasks are being dropped out. Even cloud-flying, with
all its skill and beauty, is becoming a rarity.
The grid through which a glider pilot must pass in order to get
into his country’s world team is restricting entrants to an emphasis
on a limited range of skills. Championship flying is becoming more
mechanistic and less romantic. Luck is a dirty word.
We are not competing against modern Championship philosophy.
Even ice-cream has more than one flavour. We are going to find out
if a number of valuable enthusiasts prefer strawberry rather than
vanilla.” Philip Wills from “Free As a Bird”.
Philip Wills instigated “Competition Enterprise” (www.compenterprise.com)
as a way of promoting this idea. Competitions are
run at various sites in the UK every two or three years with pilots
landing all over England each day.
Obviously there are drawbacks. Some days the real winner is
not known for until late, or until the following day. Retrieves can
be long… which is also part of the tradition. Kitty Wills, Philip’s
better half, drove around 1160 miles over one Easter in the UK in a
Vanguard towing a glider trailer. What a woman!
“You have just had a day of freedom “in excelsis” : yours has been
the sky and all that therein is. It would seem in retrospect as harmless
a glory as man could aspire to.
Free as a Bird will try to show how this freedom was won and
retained and to foreshadow the work and struggle that lies ahead
to maintain it.
For if it is taken for granted, it will, stage by stage, be worn away
and, like the evening cumulus, will die.”
Keep Soaring October-November 2009 Page 18