16 June 2020
The annual Pooley’s Dawn to Dusk Challenge flying competition is always a popular event and it’s now in its 57th year – still on this year despite the Coronavirus issue.
Simply put, the Objective of Dawn to Dusk is “to encourage the most interesting employment of a Flying Machine within the limits of competent airmanship and to demonstrate the capabilities of pilot and machine in a day’s flying, in the hours between Dawn and Dusk, whilst undertaking an original and praiseworthy objective”.
FLYER has heard about three entries for this year’s Challenge which are raising funds for NHS related causes. They are:
Fiona and Angus have planned a very busy 12 hours attempting to set a record for most airfields visited. Top: getting ready for departure from Sywell
Fiona and Angus Macaskill are fund-raising for The Air Ambulance Service AND attempting to set a new Guinness World Record for the ‘Most airfields visited in 12 hours by fixed-wing aircraft’.
“We are planning to land at over 60 airfields between Birmingham and East Anglia in 12 hours, “ said Fiona.
“Although it’s only going to be 12 hours of flying, it’s taking many weeks to prepare as I have contacted over 100 airfields by phone and email as well as researching every airfield.
“It’s been tremendous fun and every single airfield has agreed to waived their landing fee to support The Air Ambulance. Although I have got a PPR for 100 airfields, I’ll be happy if we manage 50. Anything over that will be a bonus.
“All we need now is some good weather. We have put in a couple of provisional dates: 7th & 14th July, starting and finishing at Sywell.”
If you’d like to support Fiona and Angus, go to their Just Giving page.
For Chris and Lee, the Challenge is to honour Sir Stirling Moss by overflying motor racing circuits. Recognise this one?
Pilots Chris Bullock and Lee Wilson, who are based at Peterborough Sibson, are raising funds for the NHS Charities Together, a collective representing, supporting and championing the work of the NHS official charities, supporting the frontline NHS staff and volunteers caring for Covid-19 patients.
“We thought that doing something in honour of the late great Sir Stirling Moss would be fitting given the sporting challenge aspect to the Dawn to Dusk event,” said Chris.
“A serious challenge and at the same time raise money for NHS Charities Together would be to overfly famous racing circuits in England and Wales (15 tracks over 840nm), taking aerial shots as we go and doing it all in a day!
“As well as main sponsorship via our just giving page, we’re going to take aerial photos of the circuits along the way. Then, we will frame and auction them after the event as a collector’s set to raise further funds.
The Team Sibson D2D JustGiving page is here.
Nic Orchard’s D2D Challenge was to overfly Follies. Where’s this?
LAA member Nic Orchard has already completed her Dawn to Dusk Challenge, which involved nine hours of flying in her 1946 Aeronca Champ. The subject: Searching for Follies. No comment!
Her flight has already raised more than £1,000 for the very worthwhile and local to Nic’s Kent base charity, The Martha Trust, which cares for people with profound disabilities. Smaller charities like this have suffered more than many during the Covid-19 pandemic.
If you’d like to contribute to Nic’s JustGiving campaign, go here.
