The Orbiflyers Team for the 100/24

The 100/24 Breitling Cup is a friendly aeronautical competition in which a team of Orbiflyers participated in 2011, on quite an unusual plane.

This beautiful adventure will remain engraved in our memories ... here are a few words and photos to let you discover it.
Get ready for a smily story and some (almost always) blue sky!

The principle

The 100/24 Breitling cup is a somewhat special race with a simple rule: a team must fly an airplane for 24 hours and successfully land on more than 100 aerodromes!
The objective: a great human adventure, and the demonstration of the richness of the French aerodromes network!

Any type of airplane can join : turbine, piston, vintage, tailwheel, state of the art aircraft ... the regulation must be complied with at any time, and the crew has to respect some minimum imposed rest time (which means therefore to switch crew during the race).
Each year, additional rules are added to make things fun, and to encourage the crews to travel the French territory. At first glance, fairly simple as a rule ... and that's where the adventure begins!

The team

The team consisted of a happy band of Orbiflyers:

Baudouin d'Aumeries (Team Chief Pilot)
Frédéric BENOIST (Assistance Pilot)
Bernard BOCHATAY (Assistance and Nord 3400 Pilot)
Yves BRUCKER (Nord 3400 Pilot)
Betty CELICOUT (Nord 3400 Pilot)
Philippe COTREL (Nord 3400 Pilot)
François DOYEN (Nord 3400 Pilot & Strategy)
Eric GIFFARD (aircraft technical preparation)
Nathalie GILLIERS (Nord 3400 Pilot)
Marc-Olivier MÉHU (Ground team)
Eric ODIN (Assistance Pilot)
Julien SABENE (Nord 3400 Pilot)
Alexandra ZAINAL (Nord 3400 Pilot & instructor)

Our Racer

As the Orbiflyers Team is a group of enthusiasts, we decide to live an exceptional moment of Aviation with friends, and make the unlikely choice of selecting the least equipped, oldest and slowest plane of all the competitors having never participated in the 100/24 Breitling Cup! And what's more, it's a tailwheel!

The NORD 3400 Norbarbe, former military observation warbird for the Algerian war, belongs to our instructor Alexandra, and is the last airworthy aircraft of this kind.
Absolutely perfect for a group of Orbiflyers looking for a challenge!
Tailwheel, History and good humor will be the key words of this team!

But challenge & fun are not incompatible with a sharp organization...
The Nord 3400 is an former military aircraft from the French ALAT, with exceptional STOL & bushflying performances. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to prepare this Old Lady for such a mechanical adventure, and also to train the pilots, because there is then only one N3400 pilotin France... and she will need to train the team!

It's the starting point of a long serie of briefings, meetings, trainings, developments in order to set up the best possible race organization, with good laughs and good moments of friendship.

It's the day !

It's the day, and we have an extra member in the team : Vincent Bazillio will be the coordinator of the virtual team.

Yes, we also have a virtual team!
Our Nord 3400 has been modelized for virtual flight networks, and a team of virtual pilots will follow the same route as our Nord, in real time!
The virtual N3400 was designed by the talented Gilles Faulmeyer, and the technical advice for the virtual team is provided by Manuel Goepfert, also known for his membership in the Swiss Virtual Patrol.
Vincent, present at our headquarters, coordinates the team's decisions in real time on the network to allow the virtual plane to follow the same route ...

Our headquarter settles near Villacoublay, which is the final destination of the race, while the plane and its first pilots starts to wriggle on the air force base of Francazal, starting point of the race.

During the entire race, the ground team, under the leadership of Marc-Olivier Méhu, will assist the aircraft in flight to make the best decisions, analyze the weather, and coordinate clearances with the military airspaces or airfields, and even to make hotel reservations and taxis. The race aircraft but also the assistance airplanes are informed of the evolution of the race through an iPhone application developped for our team.

Because we have several orbiflyers onboard assistance airplanes in order to drop off and collect the pilots for the Nord3400!

In the end, no competitor will be able to complete 100 aerodromes that year due to the harsh weather conditions, but our Nord 3400 Orbiflyer placed worthily in the middle of the ranking ... good job for a winged veteran!

We would particularly like to thank:

Jean Barbaud for our great logo (see his blog)
Le Château de Potelières for these unforgettable briefings and meetings
DOYEN Systems website here : http://www.doyensarl.fr/ for the technical support
Manuel GOEPFERT for his assistance with the virtual team
and Vincent BAZILLIO who spent the day of the race coordinating online
Gilles FAULMEYER website here : http://www.restauravia.com/ who designed the virtual airplane
And the whole team, on ground and in flight, and all these individuals who assisted us to complete this beautiful project!
Thank you also for the pictures on this page (especially Eric Odin).