‘Gliding weather’ played a joke on many

There are young people wearing white T-shirts and baseball caps with the NFTC logo sitting by the gate of one of the hangars at the Szandaszõlõs airfield for recreational aviation. The sunrays haven’t reached this area yet and it seems that the air also flows a bit faster in the shade. It is half past eight in the morning, the three airplanes are ready to take off, and the crew has completed the obligatory checks on the two FALKE motor gliders and the grey ZLIN–43 before takeoff. Their supervisor is listing the names, and in a few minutes, two people can take off in the motor gliders and three in the ZLIN.

The instructors supervise boarding and the fastening of belts in each case, the propellers can roar only after the inspection. Then the three planes slowly roll up to the end of the grassy airstrip. We can hear it even from hundreds of metres away when the pilots speed up and in a few seconds, they are up in the sky.

– This nice weather has played a joke on the youngsters – says László Kassai, an instructor – because we had perfect ’gliding weather’ in the afternoon of the first day. During our flights we were crossing relatively big thermals, which you can feel in your stomach, mainly if you are flying for the first time. Some campers were suffering from nausea, but fortunately, there were no major problems.

The retired military officer also tells me that he has been a regular guest for years at the Career Orientation Aviation Camps, organised by the HDF Joint Forces Command and the MoD Zrínyi Nonprofit Ltd. As a member of the Honvéd Sports Aviation Association of Szolnok, he is one of the five instructors with several decades of experience who are flying the ladies and the guys of the camp in one of their three planes this week. He says it is a really nice task to teach young people the basics of aviation, who might become the fighter pilots and helicopter pilots of the future.

The thirty minute session goes by fast, the three planes are landing after one another and the engines are stopped only for a few minutes while the instructors and the campers get out of the planes and new people get in, then the next ’round’ begins. With a little exaggeration, we can say that they are trying to utilise every second and spend as much time as possible in the air, because on this day they can fly only in the morning, their program continues in Kecskemét in the afternoon, at the HDF 59th ’Dezsõ Szentgyörgyi’ Aviation Base. There they will learn about the corps, the fighter planes in service, pay a visit to the corps’ museum and the HDF Aircraft Repair Plant.

But without doubt, the highest point of the day will be the flight scheduled for early in the evening. Plans are that they will also fly an AN–26 transport aircraft the crew of which will be performing an en-route training. Which means that the campers will return from Kecskemét to Szolnok in the ’Ancsa’. It is understandable that the fifteen students are already very excited, many of them haven’t even seen a real AN–26, and now they have a chance to fly in a ’huge coffee-grinder’ for a few hours…

– Why did you apply for the camp? – I ask Zsófia Martinkó from Budapest. The young lady is a second-year student at Corvinus University, majoring in political science, and tells me that one of her friends was a camper last year and he told her how fantastic this program is, so she has decided to come to Szolnok this year. She applied on the internet, but it seemed for a long time that she was going to be unlucky because there were four or five applicants for every place. Then finally, almost in the last minute, she was told that she can participate in the Szolnok camp. 

– I was very happy when I found out that I can come. I have flown passenger airplanes before but I haven’t flown a small plane. I was very curious to find out how it feels to rise into the air with these planes – says the young lady, who adds: the first time she flew the ZLIN she was a bit sick because the plane was often behaving like a ’rollercoaster’ which nauseated her. Fortunately, at the next takeoff – already in a FALKE – she didn’t have any problem.

Zsófi doesn’t deny that it has crossed her mind: she will become a fighter pilot, since she likes the military environment very much and the ’atmosphere of aviation’ she’s experienced in recent days. Of course, she will wait until the camp ends and only then will she decide if she applies for the NFTC program.

He tells me he has never flown in his life, therefore he was really looking forward to the first takeoff and it hasn’t let him down. So far he had the opportunity to try both planes, he says he prefers the ZLIN because "it is quicker and it manoeuvres well".

Péter has been consciously preparing for a military career for years. It is not a coincidence that he would like to continue his studies at Zrínyi Miklós University of National Defence. Although there are still a few days to go until the admission results are announced, he hopes that starting from September, he will be a university student in Budapest. Naturally, he is also interested in military aviation, therefore on his last day in the camp, he will submit his application for the NFTC program.

While we are having a conversation, the planes take off again, it seems that there is enough time left for another ’round’ this morning. Later, following their trip to Kecskemét, the campers will be flying all day tomorrow. Before leaving, the girls and boys will be shown around the Szolnok military base. Many of them tell me: five days go by fast, ’twice as much would still not be enough’. That is why some of them have pledged: if there is an aviation camp next year, they would like to participate again.