ChipMeet
2000, the 3rd International gathering of DHC-1 Chipmunks and
Formation Flying School was held in Lons le Saunier (LFGL), from April 27th
to May 1st. Once again, many of the would-be entrants had to face adverse
weather conditions to get to that cosy little airfields all of those who
attended the previous ChipMeets have learned to love.
Laurent
Lecomte and F-AZUR
got stuck in the mud in Romorantin after they had to land because of a heavy
rain front, Frédéric Louis decided not to take off from Toulouse
in F-AZGO
as did Jean-Paul Dubroca and Thierry Thomassin and their Les Mureaux based
F-AZGP.
Also because of bad weather, Andreas Knöffler and his D-EPAK had to
cancel. And the swiss Association pour le Maintien du Patrimoine Aéronautique
HB-TUM could not take off because of runway resurfacing works... Well, if
all had gone according to plans, 14 Chipmunks could have gathered in Lons
le Saunier, but, finally, 9 DHC-1 only made it. This year, all the newcomers
had traveled a long way, those being english registered chippies :
Except for the belgian
based G-AORJ, all of the english Chipmunks had taken off from Booker thursday
morning, as well as a Piper Seneca support plane flown by Robert Miller and
his friend Judy, and made it in the evening despite unfriendly weather conditions.
On the french
side, four planes made it :
Formation flying courses
started a bit slow on the friday morning because of low ceiling and rain,
but then the rythm of the sorties built up as the weather improved. We were
joined on the saturday by Belgian Jean-Michel Legrand, who travelled all the
way from Bruxelles by road. Jean-Michel is an airline pilot with Sabena, but
also one of the two pilots of the well-known Sabena Old Timers' Westland Lysander.
Finally sun and blue sky showed up, allowing ChipMeet 2000 to log an amazing
72 training sorties for a total flight time of 54h35.
To go into details, each of the 15 student pilots logged an average 3h38 minutes
of formation flying instruction, making it for 4,8 sorties per pilote. This
was made possible thanks to the tremendous energy deployed by our instructors
: Bernard 'Charbo' Charbonnel, François 'Ponpon' Ponsot, Patrice 'Marchi'
Marchasson, Robert Faix, Aldo Ganzini, Didier Cohendet and Robert Miller.
Thank you again guy's you did a great job ! All their efforts came to fruition
on the sunday evening when a seven-ship formation was flown without a hitch,
in the glowing sunset light. While keeping station as n° 3, I remembered
the arrival of the four british Chipmunks on the previous thursday. They came
in the patern in a very loose trail, half-a-mile away from each other. Marchi
came out of the club-house, took a look and whispered : " Well, they
sure need some formation flying training ! " Now, I could see three of
them working hard to keep their station, but looking good…
On
the side, ChipMeet 2000 was treated with a couple of really nice visiting
planes. As last year, Alain Flotard came to attend the formation clinic in
his shiny Pilatus P2, leaving it to fly his old mount WP914 during the training
sorties. For his part, Jean-Luc Langeard elected to travel from Caen in grand
style, at the controls of his beautiful Lockheed 12 Electra Junior which did
attract a lot of attention. On the saturday, fumes of Jet A1 could be smelled
as Tony de Bruyn landed in the odd looking Short Skyvan. Tony was first to
attend ChipMeet with one of his two Bruxelles based Chipmunks, but got late
on his schedule ferrying back from South Africa his newly bought cargo plane.
So he diverted a tad from his route to pay us a visit. Thank you Tony ! Finally,
those who had not departed early on the monday morning were treated with a
top class grand finale when the 2200 hp of a Rolls-Royce Griffon could be
heard roaring over Lons. After a few passes and rolls, Christophe Jacquard
landed his awesome Spitfire Mk. XIV F-AZSJ and had lunch with us. Then, he
gave an amazing full display to a thrilled little crowd. Thank you Christophe
for offering us such a beautiful closing piece to ChipMeet 2000.
See you all next year — and don't forget to check out chipmeet.com for announcement of the dates.
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