10th Anniversary Rally Report
by Ian Dunkley

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The Camphill Rally is unique in gliding for being the only flying event linked to the ecclesiastical calendar and the local Tideswell Well Dressing Festival. This over the years has guaranteed exceptional flying weather, until this year that is. The Patronal Festival of St John the Baptist produced the first heat wave of the summer, the expected carnival, well dressings and funfair, but not the Camphill Rally.  Due to an error with an ecclesiastical calculation, something that seems to involve the nearest Wednesday to the last Saturday, plus, or was it minus, twice the square root of the number of disciples, the rally was organised for the following week. As a result we did not get the ordered weather.

Despite this, or because they did not know, we assembled a fleet of some 30 vintage/classic gliders with nearly 100 visitors, pilots, including two from overseas, family, friends and other pilots who bought a day return. Over the 6 flying days we totalled over 154 hours and 180 launches, consumed an unknown quantity of beer, found the proportion of wine and lager consumption had increased, probably due to participants from the poncy south, but all developed a taste for G & T.

If you have never been to a Camphill Rally you will not know that it is totally unlike any other gliding event if only because flying is only one of a number of activities. The idea of tying in with the Tideswell Festival was to provide something for the families that we did not have to organise, pity about that, but there were other festivals to go to. Two group outings took place during the week, on bad weather days, one to the aerospace section of the Manchester Museum of Science and Technology where pilots showed an unhealthy interest in a Kamikaze bomb/plane and Victorian sewage systems. The latter being of particular relevance to those vintage pilots who need them more frequently than Wolf Hirth and others allowed for.

The “Man of the Rally Plate” had to be renamed as the “Person etc” for the very good reason that this year it was awarded to Caroline Coates for the standard of her entries in the “Limerick Competition”. It may seem strange that no flying was involved, but it is always awarded by popular acclaim to the person who best meets the “spirit of the rally”.

I had better tell you a bit about the flying, as despite the weather we had some very good days, the best allowing Tom Edwards, in a Ka8, and John Young, in an LSpatz, to do an out and return to Sutton Bank, some 240km. This led to them winning the daily prize of wine selected for its diuretic qualities; thus evening out handicaps and keeping future flights to something shorter and maximising launches. There were only two away landings, which was just as well for there were social events and competitions on most nights.

This brings us neatly to the deserving, or in some cases undeserving winners of these competitions. The A4 paper aeroplane competition has both standard and open classes, with rules intended to give participants an opportunity to show “technological ingenuity”, perhaps better described as “constructive cheating”. This led to two full cat instructors, who shall be nameless, as we have already told you about Sutton Bank, wrapping a stone in the A4 sheet of paper and throwing it. This idea was taken to extreme lengths by one of our Irish contenders, who did not bother to throw but instead palmed it and “picked it up” halfway to Holyhead. This, was we thought, quite in the Camphill spirit so he was adjudged the Open winner. David Searle, from Kent was the Standard class winner with a sad performance that indicates the low standard of his fellow pilots.

The Quiz Night, was like most nights, sabotaged, by Peter Redshaw, of the Lakes GC, spiking peoples tonic water and ice with gin, dispensed from his mobile pub. On this night he hid the tonic water which led in my case to a painful experience involving unstable chairs. That said, the Quiz winners were “Dunstable (Not so Dunce)”, with second and third “The Late Ka6” Stratford GC, with “Brummies Environs”, a splinter group from the same club.

This left the “Horse Shoe Competition” which went on, pouring rain or shine, through out the week the final being won by the “Flatlanders” a co-operative of pilots from less interesting sites, with a lack lustre performance beating “Dunstable”. A team it turned out with only one member, who lives in Dunstable and flies at Haddenham.

An unplanned event took place early in the week “The Grand Tractor Retrieve”. The week before, Camphill’s spare grass cutting tractor went missing, Interpol were called in, but thought it would already be in Eastern Europe. However a modest pilot solved the problem by, when paying a visit to the wooded slope went further down than most, stared ahead as one does, and spotted below him a yellow wreck. The rest of the day was spent in occasional watching of it’s much slower return journey. We will try to organise a suitable competition next year, if you bring your own tractor.

Caroline, our “Person etc” has already been mentioned but to give you a taste of the “Limerick Competition”, which has about as much relevance to Limerick, as Bognor Regis, here are two verses from her best entry, and one by a chicken called “Anon”

“We’ve lost some friends over the years.
We mourn them but we shed no tears.
But stand in the bar and reminisce
Of their exploits doing that and this
In gliders made of paint and wood
As any decent glider should.”

"The Vintage pilots, they don’t care
As long as they get in the air
In aircraft older than the Ark
Rigged by folk up with the lark
So every year they come back still,
The Vintage Rally at Camphill."

For those of you who know the Camphill Rally it will come as no surprise that the “Camphill Limerick Book” will be on sale shortly. If you would like to be included celebrating your club, just send your contributions to me, ian_dunkley@xtra.co.nz

I had better get back to the flying, and the famous “Camphill Horn”, but first what aircraft were there?

All in all quite a lot of quality, and now for who did what with what.

Daily Prizes ignoring dinosaurs, boomerangs, snakes etc

The rally closed on Saturday evening with “Zadok the Priest” echoing over the Peak District accompanied by a firework display, described by the educated as “bloody marvellous” and the rest of us as “Ah”.

That completes the report, I will now go and ask St John when he is planning his next Patronal Festival, and if “Zadok the Priest” has earned us better weather for next year.

Ian Dunkley

Stop Press.  I have just found out that we did hold the rally on the week that St John approves of, it was the Festival who mucked it up. They decided calculating the date was all to much for them and decided that in future , and that included 2005, the festival would always be over the last full week in June. So now you know when you should be at Camphill each year.

“There’s a fellow we all know called Peter Who restored a fantastic two seater With all instruments in There’s no room for the gin. Not even a tenth of a litre” Anon