Sywell revival Rally 2009 5th 6th Sept 09

[trevs99uk]

This year's event will be on Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th September.
Aircraft are welcome to fly-in on the Friday 4th before and stay.

Sounds like this event will be as good as the old PFA rallies

Alas you need slots.
But don.,t worry if you miss it.
Please note: you will not be turned away if you miss your slot time so if you are unable to predict your arrival time just book a slot late in the day. Priority is given to those arriving within 15 minutes of their slot time so you may be held up to allow others to land first if you are late or early. Slot times are local time.

Details taken form website

The arrival procedures can be found here
http://www.sywellaerodrome.co.uk/documents/revivalrally09joininginstructions.pdf

Slot booking can be done here

Sywell Aerodrome - Events - Fly-In Bookings (http://www.sywellaerodrome.co.uk/bookings.php)

After the excellent news that airside access for all has been granted, there is more good news that as of today Sywell have increased the number of slots available between 09.00 and 12.00 on Saturday. so if previously you were unable to get a slot on Saturday morning you can now try again and should be able to get a suitable slot.

One piece of bad news is that after publishing the arrival procedures, Sywell have now found out that the CAA arent going to approve their exemption to rule 14 after all.
This was the exemption that allows aircraft to land on an occupied runway if it is safe to do so.

Therefore now, even if it is safe to do so, aircraft will have to go around or land on the ParalleI runway if thats not occupied and no one else on short final, rather than landing on a runway that is still occupied.
It is unfortunate that the CAA have decided not to alleviate this rule which would have made operations safer with less need to go around, but I guess bureaucracy and the legal department triumphs over common sense and practical airmanship again!

Looking forward to an excellent weekend

[Rod1]

“Sounds like this event will be as good as the old PFA rallies”

Just for clarification this event is not organised by the LAA. It is 100% Sywell and I wish them every success. The old rally’s organised and run by the LAA attracted 1500+ aircraft so if Sywell can match that they could be running the largest event in Europe, just like the PFA did for many years.

Rod1

[jonkil]

Thanks Rod,
This is sounding like its shaping up to be a good event. Will make the effort to get there from Ireland, weather permitting.
Thank you for the heads up, appreciated.

Jon

[Bigglesthefrog]

"It is unfortunate that the CAA have decided not to alleviate this rule which would have made operations safer with less need to go around, but I guess bureaucracy and the legal department triumphs over common sense and practical airmanship again!"

Is it not about time that someone in a position of command at the CAA started to weed out these people that insist on this sort of blind faith to the rule book which frankly flys in the face of common sense? Surely the "credit crunch" can be used as a good excuse (as it has been with many other organisations) to make a number of (useful) redundancies in an outfit that has been far too bloated and obstructive for far too long:*

On the other side of the "sense" fence, it is refreshing that Sywell has demonstrated a flexibility of mind and good thinking to change their direction on airside arrangements for their "revival rally". This will make all the difference to those pilots and spotters that do not have the use of an aeroplane to go to the rally. Intitially, I had decided I would not be going due to the silly arrangement to chaparone all non fly-in pilots and others around airside. But I think they have listened to the voice of reason and probably read the strings in various forums and changed their minds for the better. This is not a step down Sywell, this is senior thinking from the benefit of lively debate and it would be a damn good thing if other organisations took a leaf out of their book and tried a bit of it themselves!
I hope the weekend goes well and as an old PFA member and Rally pilot I will be there and supporting it to the full. The lack of a controlling involvement by the LAA may be a good thing and lend itself nicely to a previous post that I made on this forum that suggested that if we are to revisit the days when we had such a fantastic national/international rally we do so without the organisational involvement of the LAA. It follows therefore that if this rally is successfully run by Sywell without the LAA, there is no reason why the LAA should adopt any control of it in the future. Q.E.D.;)

[trevs99uk]

Looks like it should be a good turn out.

Joining instructuions

http://www.sywellaerodrome.co.uk/documents/revivalrally09joininginstructions.pdf

And the weather looking good for the weekend

trevor