Dawn to Dusk

[AerBabe]

Well, that's it, over for another year. No more waiting and wondering about how we all did. Congratulations to everyone who managed to get an entry in, and to all the prize-winners. Nice to see so many PPRuNers there!
Now... what am I going to do next year? :hmm:

[FlyingForFun]

Yep... congratulations to Whirlybird for coming scond. I had a good look through her report, and it was superb. I didn't get a chance to look at the winner's report, but it must have been outstanding.

Also, a huge Thanks to AerBabe. 18 months ago, she suggested that we should enter. At first I thought she was joking. Then I thought she was mad. But eventually she pursuaded me. We decided to keep our entrance quiet, so that when we turned up at the awards, we could surprise Whirly..... and hopefully not be too far behind her - something which I think we achieved very well, coming joint 3rd! AerBabe, I never would have done it without you, so thank you.

It would be really nice to see evenmore PPRuNers there next year!

FFF
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[BRL]

Well done you two! Joint third, thats excellent... :ok:

Big pat on the back also to Whirly for coming second...Well done Whirls... :ok:

[LowNSlow]

Congratulations to all, how about a blow-by-blow account from the participants ????

[Evo]

Well done :ok: now tell us about it :)


It would be really nice to see evenmore PPRuNers there next year!


Mmm, think I might have to give it a go... how/where/when etc.???

[Hersham Boy]

I have exactly the same question as Evo! Really don't know anything about this event...

Well done, AB - sorry I couldn't be there to see the prizegiving...

Hersh

[TheKentishFledgling]

Well done people - but come on, do tell us more!

tKF

[Keef]

Yeah - what's all this? Where's the website with the info?

[Tall_guy_in_a_152]

Phew. Glad I'm not the only one who hasn't got a clue what this thread is about.

I'm off for a quick Google to find out. Depending on what I find, I might be there (where-ever / what-ever "there" is) next year.

TG

[Evo]

I know what it is about - Whirly has posted about previous years, a search should find those, and she wrote about her win in Pilot - i've just got no idea how to enter it...

Didn't seem practical if you're renting, too expensive (at least Dahn Sarf it is). Not such a problem now :ok:

[Aerohack]

Usually runs April-August in the Northern Hemisphere. David Hamilton is the organiser, tel: 01582 765072, fax: 01582 766724, e-mail: [email protected]

[Kingy]

Well done AB, FFF and Wirly. :ok:

I must get it together for next year..
I must... (repeat 100 times)

Kingy

[Whirlybird]

Well, I'll probably do another article, but just for PPRuNers, here goes...

But firstly I want to say, ESPECIALLY WELL DONE to FFF and Aerbabe for coming third, on their FIRST ATTEMPT! it takes most of us at least one go to work out exactly what's required. I don't think either of them realise how well they've done.

Anyway...

The Dawn to Dusk is an annual international flying competition, and the stated aim is" the most interesting employment within the limits of competent airmanship demonstrating the capablities of pilot and aircraft between the hours of dawn and dusk". You need to do at least eight hours flying in the day, and there's a complicated scoring system based on originality of theme, airmanship, write-up, etc etc etc. It's all explained in the entry form and details, which you can get from David Hamilton, as explained above.

Tricia, my partner-in-crime...er, I mean co-pilot..and I first entered it in 2000, without much idea of what was required. We came fifth and won the Bonney Trophy for the best all ladies entry. The following year we entered again, and won! We also got the Bonney Trophy again, and the Pooley Sword for the best presented log/report. There are loads of prizes; most entries that are completed win something, as completing it is the hardest thing to do. Our theme that year was "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" as it relates to the life, history, and folklore of Wales and the borders. There's an article on it in Pilot; August 2002.

In 2002 we got a message from David Hamilton: "The Duke (of Edinburgh) expects last year's winners to defend their position!" So we started thinking in earnest about a theme. Eventually we decided that, it being the Queen's Golden Jubilee year, we'd find 50 "Turning Points" of the last 50 years, and fly between the, However, that was too easy!!! We decided to find one for each year, and fly the shape of a 50! As far as we knew, flying a shape had never been done before.

It took ages to research, as some years nothing seemed to have happened, or if it had, it wouldn't fit into our "50". Anyway, we planned the route, on the day were up at 4am to check wx, NOTAMs, and Royal Flights, and took off about 7am. I flew us on a convoluted first leg from Gloucester to Wellesbourne, via most of the South of England, while Tricia navigated did the radio, and took photos. We swopped roles for the next leg - via the Pennines to Nottingham. A quick lunch, then on to Elstree, then the final leg was through East Anglia to complete the "zero", then back to Gloucester by latish evening.

A tiring day - but that's the easy bit! Writing it up, if you want to win, takes for ever!! To be honest, Tricia did most of it, but I'd done most of the research, so it balanced out. Vowing never to do it again - but we'd said that the previous year - we sent it in.

Then....

Owing to the bad weather, only three entries were completed!!!! The judges decided to combine 2002 with 2003. We weren't best pleased I can tell you. We'd moved heaven and earth to fly despite the bad weather, and my back still ached from flying a C172, in which I need three cushions, because we borrowed it at the last moment on one of the few good wx days. On top of that, I only had four hours in that type ever, hadn't flown it for ages, and was dodging clouds at low level at about 7am. Anyway, it was all put on hold till 2003, for us anyway.

Aerbabe and FFF will have to tell you about 2003. Tricia and I forgot about it all until we got our invitations to the Awards Ceremony - well, I did spend the year getting an instructors rating and a flying job and one can't do everything!

We were delighted to come second. We also got the Pooley Sword back, and the Bonney Trophy for the third year. As well as coming joint third, Aerbabe and FFF also got the long distance medal, for flying their little socks off in a fast aircraft - nearly 1000 miles, if I remember correctly!!!

The chap who won is a regular entrant, does it every year, has come second and third several times, but never won. His theme was the wooden hotels of Norway (he's Norwegian), and he flew the whole thing SOLO. Believe me, it's difficult and knackering with two of you, never mind doing it alone. It was beautifully presented, and he well deserved to win.

We're not planning on doing it again, though you never know. I already have a draft of a planned article, maybe for Flyer this time. There's also a Half Competition, and I may do that in a helicopter next year, as I already have a theme. I'd like to do it solo, but in an R22, for the sake of safety, I should probably take someone along to take the photos for me at least. Well, we'll see...

Anyway, I think three winners from this forum is pretty good.:ok: Let's get a few more next year.

[FlyingForFun]

Well, I have all the details of how to enter in front of me here... but others have beaten me to it, and posted everything you need to know already, so I won't repeat it!

AerBabe and I decided to produce a Pilots' Guide to some lesser-known airfields. Most importantly, there had to be something interesting to do there, which we could write about in our guide. All the airfields had to be within a sensible distance from London, such that a London-based pilot could go there for the day. And we tried to avoid all the most common airfields, too.

We had a rough idea of the kind of distance from London which the airfields would have to be, so we drew a large circle on a chart, and began looking for interesting places near to the edge of our circle. The route took us through the Channel Islands, northern France and into Belgium, as well as covering most of southern England - so as well as being intersting, some of the airfields that we visited also had to meet customs requirements too.

Covering such a large area meant that weather was crucial to our mission. We aborted our first attempt before we even started, because a small area of low pressure had unexpectedly formed over northern France. On the second attempt, the forecast, even when we set out, was good, but we ran into some unforecast low visibility below the very low cloudbase. We diverted safely, and flew on when the weather cleared, but eventually ran into more clouds, and realised that we would have to abort this attempt because we had wasted too much time with our diversions.

On the third attempt, we successfully completed the route. We produced a guide to such airfields as Coventry, Branscombe, Alderney, Beavais, Charleville-Mezieres, Charleroi, Framlingham, Peterborough Conington, Skegness and Long Mynd - and a last minute addition, Shotteswell, which replaced Long Mynd when we found out that the field at Long Mynd had been reduced to something a little shorter than the length I'd have been comfortable with. We would land at all of these airports, talking to the locals, and picking up leaflets about nearby tourist attractions.

We planned to set out at 4.30am to pre-flight the aircraft, ready for a 5.30 departure. But with Coventry not opening quite so early on Monday as they do on other days of the week, we were delayed right from the start. Noise abatement issues meant that we had to overfly Branscombe without being allowed to land there, but from there we flew on to land at all our planned destinations in the Channel Islands, France, and then into Belgium. Turnaround times were crucial to us - we had to refuel, pay landing fees, clear customs, use the toilet, and get as much local information as we could - and the schedule called for stops of between 30 and 60 minutes (depending on the size of the airfield, whether we needed fuel, and so on). But we managed to keep to our schedule pretty well, all the way to Framlingham - and that was where we started having problems. Conington - our next fuel stop - told us their fuel pumps were broken. At Skegness, they had closed the runway to do some maintenance on it. We had no choice but to get fuel at Framlingham if we were to complete our planned route.

We found some very friendly people doing some gardening in the farm next door, and one of them offered to drive us into town. An hour later, and we'd purchased a half a dozen 5-litre fuel cans, filled them all with MoGas, and poured the MoGas into the Europa, and we were set to go. We had taken long enough to do all this that we had to overfly Conington rather than land there - not only were they closed, but we were running out of daylight. And of course we had to overfly Skegness, too, since the runway was closed, before heading for our final stop, Shotteswell.

Whirly has already mentioned how gruelling the day is. The competition rules require you to start doing something related to the competition at 4.30am. Many competitors choose to use this time to eat breakfast, travel to the airfield, finish the planning and so on. But, with so many stops to make, we knew that we'd have to start flying as early as possible. By the time we arrived at Shotteswell, it was over 14 hours since we'd first taken off from Coventry, and we'd logged 9 hours' flying in that time. I was absolutely knackered... and that was a large factor in my running off the runway at Shotteswell and bending the undercarriage - something which I've mentioned on PPRuNe a couple of times (but couldn't go into details without giving the game away to Whirly that she'd be seeing us at the awards dinner!)

Despite that, it really was a wonderful experience. Neither AerBabe nor I had ever flown across the Channel before without an instructor, yet here we were arranging for life-jacket and life-raft hire, reading up on the various requirements for travel between the UK, Channel Islands, France and Belgium, researching landing fees, PPR and out-of-hours operation at every airfield from international airports through to tiny farm-strips and gliding fields which don't normally accept powered visitors but might make an exception if we talked to them nicely enough. As well as that, we had to research the local area, and plan our time with far more precision than I've ever done before or since, figure out where to eat and where to refuel, and do a bit of jiggling with weight+balance to ensure we could safely carry both of us, a liferaft, and full tanks of fuel.

If this sounds fun, and you fancy having a go, then don't underestimate the amount of work that's involved (of 26 entries over the last two years, only 10 managed to complete it), but if you're prepared to put in the effort then you will definitely be rewarded with a sense of achievement.

FFF
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[AerBabe]

If anyone thinks this is a good idea, I have written up our attempt into an article ... Do you think one of the mags would be interested?

[TheKentishFledgling]

Yes, definitely.

tKF

[Whirlybird]

Aerbabe,

Yes. But let me know which one you're sending it to, and I'll send mine to the other one.

[Hersham Boy]

AB - I'd love to see the article! Get it off to Flyer so I can read about it in my susbscribed issue...

This sounds like a great thing to do - if any of the Redhill (or nearby) pilots here are interested in doing a duet next year, please PM me and let me know...

Hersh

[John Farley]

If the success of Whirly, AerBabe and FFF inspires other PPRuNers to have a go next year that would be really excellent.

Let us suppose you have a good idea, do good research and planning, the flying goes well and you achieve most of what you intended so you have high hopes for your entry. May I suggest that the log will probably determine whether you finish up in the top group or not.

David Hamilton and his team of judges (who are appointed by the Chief Judge HRH The Duke of Edinburg) have quite a task sorting out an order of merit from entries that are often very different. So the rules are the place to start when you come to do your log. Look at the points allocation that is spelt out there. If you do not clearly arrange your log to enable the judges to get the information they need to allocate the various points you will not do so well.

Some of the points are for quantitative issues – the planned versus the achieved distance would be an example. If you were a judge and it took you 45 min digging through a mass of poorly presented data and then the prolonged use of a calculator to work out those two numbers as opposed to finding them spelt out in a well indexed log how would you feel?

One of the big qualitative issues concerns airmanship. Some very experienced professional pilots enter and they probably apply a very high standard of airmanship to the dozens of decisions about ATC, weather, serviceability (or what have you) as the flight goes on. But how does a judge know this if the flight narrative part of the log hardly exists? Certainly when I read a log I look to be able to join the crew from my arm chair and relive their experience. How else can you award points for airmanship?

Good luck if you decide to have a go.

[Whirlybird]

John,

Many thanks for that. One of the big questions we've had each time we entered was: "What exactly do the judges want and look for?" Despite reading the rules many times, it can still be difficult to know. Perhaps this is why many of us need one attempt and awards presentation before we start to get it right - I remember, after our first attempt, diving for the table to look at the winning entries to find out what they'd had that we hadn't! So your advice is really useful.

And let's hope it means more entries and a more difficult job for the judges next year. ;) :)

[FlyingForFun]

Thanks John. I agree with Whirly - this is very helpful feedback.

One comment which I made to David was that it would be nice to see a breakdown of the scores. It's all very well knowing which teams beat us, and looking through their logs, but even then I don't know which particular aspects they did particularly well on, and on which aspects we may have beaten them. This is particularly true when it comes to subjective areas, such as originality - Whirly's entry seemed, to me, to be especially original, and I'd guess that this was one area where her and Tricia scored particularly highly. But this is such a subjective area that I don't know whether the judges would agree. Still, having pointers like these from John can only help with next year's entry. (Oh dear, I think I may have just admited that I may be considering entering next year...)

FFF
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[Whirlybird]

FFF,

Be warned; the Dawn to Dusk is highly addictive! :eek:

[Kolibear]

FFF - is the Europa fixed now?

[FlyingForFun]

Kolibear,

The Europa was fixed within a couple of months. Unfortunately, two weeks after it flew again - and before I'd had a chance to fly it - it was grounded due to a completely unrelated issue. This unrelated issue was finally resolved last week, and it is flying again now... but I am so out of currency that I don't feel ready to fly it just yet. Weather-permitting, I'll be flying with an instructor next week to get current again.

FFF
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[John Farley]

I personally would not like to see the points awarded published as I don’t think you would find out what you want to know from such a table. This is because after each judge has done their individual marking we then have a meeting at which our marks are only the start of the decision making process. At this stage the marks highlight where we differ. This then leads to a debate and a lot of ‘Yes – I take your point, I had not noticed that’ and so on.

When I started we used to produce a points allocation (the simple average of the individual judges) and put those to the Chief Judge. These days he is briefed with written reasons for a recommended order of merit which properly reflects our eventual consensus on the order.

Having been involved with both methods I feel today's approach is fairer to all competitors.

[Evo]

Now I just need a good idea... :)

[AerBabe]

Unfortunately, the good idea is the 'easy' bit. :(

For anyone who would really like to do this, but a) can't find a partner or b) doesn't relish 8-9 hours of flying, do consider the BWPA's Chairwoman's Challenge. I took part last year with a student PPL from my flying group and we came ... joint third out of 10 (does anyone see a pattern developing?). It's slightly different in that a theme is given, but it's up to the pilot/s to interpret that theme. It really is a good introduction to the D2D.

I'm hoping to do both next year. :ok:

[Whirlybird]

I disagree, Aerbabe. I think the "good idea" is the hardest bit. But the rest of it is pretty difficult too. :eek:

There's also a Dawn to Dusk Half Competition - about four hours flying, either morning or afternoon, on a theme, otherwise similar to the full competition. This might be a more gentle way to break yourself in. Or for people like me, burnt out after three Dawn to Dusks, a saner way to do it. That's what I'll be doing next year. It might even give me time to enjoy it. :ok:

[In Altissimus]

You can guess why I spent ages hunting this down...

Dawn to Dusk (http://www.automatic-button.com/d2d/)

Oh dear - I seem to have got the bug :\