Most? Excellent!

We have just arrived in Dubnica Nad Vahom having spent the past 4 days at the amazing Lestiste Most airfield in the Czech Republic. Most is an interesting town, having been moved lock, stock and barrel several miles for mining purposes in the 1970s. The airfield sits among a series of open cast mines which look like huge quarries, many of which are disused and have now been allow to fill with water to create lakes of various sizes.

We found the place to be an aerobatic pilot's paradise. Imagine a 1000 metre grass strip with a restaurant which serves home cooked meals, pleasant accommodation just a few steps away from the hangar, a family which cannot do enough to help you, beer at 50p per 500ml, cheap fuel, your own room and three delicious meals a day for £12, a marked out aerobatic box, no other traffic or residents to spoil your fun and a barbeque in the evening with vodka chasers... That is Most.

Our daily routine went something like this:
Breakfast
Aeroplanes out of the hangar
Fly the unknown sequence as discussed and briefed the evening before
Lunch (proper cooked 3 course lunch)
Figure training (where we fly particularly tricky figures and start to choose what could be our submitted figure for the Free Unknown)
Tea break
One more flight if desired to fly the Q or our free sequences

Each day was tiring, but very rewarding with huge progress made by every pilot.

Today we reluctantly said our farewells today to our amazing hosts. Special thanks to all of the family, Misa & Markéta, and to Yadislav for making the whole thing possible for us. We WILL return to Most one day soon.

Our flight to Dubnica was very pleasant with the landscape becoming more pastoral and Germanic, as well as more mountainous. The last few miles as we approached Dubnica from the north were through a wooded valley which gave us all the feeling of really flying, as if in a dream.

Soon we were downwind to land at Dubnica as aeroplanes zoomed around the Box, taking advantage of their 15 minutes permitted practice overhead the airfield. Our turn will come tomorrow.

Our first impression was that this was very different to a domestic comp. And we spied some very serious looking aerobatic hardware in the hangars; There were Extra 330s aplenty as well as the odd SU-31 to ram home the point that there are a large proportion of pilots here who mean very serious business... but fortunately so do we.

Upon landing we were greeted by (Lord) Nick and (Lady) Jen Buckenham of Sawtry. It seemed weird that we had come all this way and Nick and Jen were there as if we had just arrived at Fenland. I was only surprised not to see their caravan in the background...!

Tomorrow will be a day for sussing out the competition and having our fifteen minutes of familiarisation. Then things get really serious on Saturday as the Q (Qualifying) programme starts... Mummy!!

David T