Aero India 2011 News

Bangalore: As the nine Kiran aircraft of IAF’s Surya Kiran aerobatics team drew Tricolour streaks across the skies on the opening day of Aero India 2011 , a Czech team of veteran flyers became their admirers.
“They are very good,” quipped Miroslav Krejci, 55.
A member of the ‘Flying Bulls’ aerobatics team, Krejci was chilling out after an equally challenging feat. “The Bangalore airfield is challenging. You won’t get the same power as you would at the sea level – so you have to save energy. “The four ZLIN 50 LX aircraft of the ‘Flying Bulls’ had flown close by, looping like an inverted G and a ‘hammerhead’. The announcer turned poetic, talking about butterfly’s grace and a raging bull’s heart.
How do you fly so close? “That is because none of us can see so far away,” team leader Radka Machova, 62, said, leaving Krejci chuckling behind his walrus moustache. All the team members are above 50.
Why do you fly? “Why not?” Krejci quipped. His colleague, Jiri Veprek, 51, sees flying as a “big pleasure”. For Jiri Sallar, 58, who was born at an airport while his family was celebrating the Czech Aviation Day (September 17), flying comes naturally.
“When I married I had a flying licence, so my husband knows what I was up to. I worked on ground for a while and then took up aerobatics.” Her elder son is an air traffic controller and the younger runs an adventure sports shop.
The foundation of the ‘Flying Bulls’ was laid in 1960, when on a small airfield in Chrudim 100km east of Prague, four friends, Tlusty, Struz, Bezak and Klimenda, formed the aerobatics group ‘Box Trener’. Soon, they were winning hearts at air shows, receiving invitations from countries beyond the Czech Republic.
10/02/11 Max Martin/India Today

Bangalore: Taking time off from their busy schedule of assembling ZLIN 50 LX, and practising for the aero show, Czech Republic’s Flying Bulls, the world’s best aerobatics team, interacted with students at Dayananda Sagar Institutions.
As the team presented videos of their formations from previous shows, students who nearly filled the hall, whistled, hooted and clapped, obviously impressed by the manoeuvres that were being shown on the screen.
Why did it take so long for the Flying Bulls to come to India, a student asked. Team manager Martin Nepovim said India had been on the cards and was being discussed for at least two years. “But because of our busy schedule, it is only now that the India show is happening,” he said.
Another question that got the team members smiling and thinking hard was which is the hardest stunt to perform. The woman member of the team, Radka Machova, replied that for each person, it was a different manoeuvre. For herself, it was the ‘inverted loop’. For Miroslav Krejci, another team member, “all of them are difficult.”
One of the questions that won a student free pass to the aero show was are all planes able to manoeuvre and perform stunts such as those performed by the Flying Bulls.
09/02/11 Merlin Francis/Daily News & Analysis