Dancing in the air

The average age of this Czech aerobatics team is 56 years.

Age may wither, but not Radka Machova and her band of intrepid aerobats — pilots who do spectacular stunts in air, rolling down mid-flight, forming a loop and so on. The four member Flying Bulls Aerobatics Team mesmerised audiences, several top officials of the Indian Air Force among them, at the Aero Show which ended in Bangalore last week with their mind-boggling performance.

But the really amazing thing about the Flying Bulls, so called because it is sponsored by energy drink Red Bull, is their age. Machova, the lead pilot, is 62; Jiri Saller, next in age, is 58; Miroslav Krejci is four years younger at 54; and the youngest, Jiri Veprek, is 51 — which makes the average age of this all Czech team all of 56 years.

 

Aerobatics is physically demanding, requiring the pilot to withstand severe G-forces (the acceleration associated with free fall). Machova, for instance, can take forces of +8 Gs and -6 Gs, at which an average person would pass out! Then he/she needs to be able to navigate well enough to make pinpoint landings or find markings within a short time. For instance, in the “mirror formation” so popular with the Bangalore crowd, which has one aircraft flying upside down above a second aircraft flying right side up, mirroring the leading aircraft’s flight, the two planes get within 20 centimetres of each other.

Of course, age confers one advantage — experience. Machova has been flying for over 30 years now. She got her private pilot’s licence in 1971 and started flying a crop duster; five years later she took up aerobatics. A member of the Czech national aerobatics team for some years, she manages a small air transport company flying executives and VIPs. Lead pilot since 2002, she skis, climbs mountains and swims to keep fit.

Most of the team has similarly intensive outdoor hobbies to keep fit. Veprek, for instance, keeps in shape by cycling and skiing regularly — both cross-country and alpine.

Saller is equally experienced, having notched 5,100 flying hours, over half of them in aerobatics. Born on the Czech “aviation day”, at the Hradec Kralove airport, Saller was perhaps destined to become a pilot. He was a member of the European Aerobatics Championship-winning team in 1985, where he finished third as a solo pilot.

That same year, Veprek too won the Czech Aerobatics Championship, but in the junior category; like Machova and Saller, he too was part of the Czech National Aerobatics Team. What’s more — his wife Jane was Glider World Champion in 2005 and won the Czech Gliding Championship many years. Even his 21-year-old son, Jan, already holds a glider pilot’s licence.

Dedication and family support, are, thus, the other explanations for the Flying Bull team’s longevity in the sport.

And also, perhaps, their extraordinary skill, which so entertained the crowd at Bangalore. The Flying Bulls started their show with the box (also called diamond) formation, changing aircraft positions both vertically and horizontally during the display. The four Zlin 50LX aircraft (specially made for aerobatics with minimal joints, in order to take more G-forces) then move into an inverted half loop, before flying upside down and arriving at what Martin Nepovim, their manager, calls “the most challenging” formation — the inverted loop. Then, of course, there is the “mirror flight”, “a speciality of the team which very few aerobatics teams in the world are able to perform,” Nepovim adds.