Our regular visitors will without doubt remember the winning picture of our photo competition last year, or maybe you visit this page because you saw a poster featuring the same picture: A beautifull plan in a captivating nose-dive over the beautifull setting of the 'Serre-Ponçon' lake in the South of France.

Pilot and owner of the plane is Etienne Verhellen. You can meet him and his plane, which is called 'Janie', on the Yak Fly-In in June in Cerfontaine.

Etienne Verhellen, born in 1963, started his flying career in the air force where he finished on the C130 Hercules. After the Air Force he went to DHL were he flew the Boeing 727, and since some time he's flying the Boeing 747 for British Airways.
In the meantime he has over 12.000 flying hours of which 3.000 on various 'small' aircraft.

Actually, the Yak 52 wasn't Etienne's first choice: initially he was in the running for a Yak 50, but since this is a single seater, and since Etienne's wife also likes to join for a ride, the choice was made to go for the 52-model. The name 'Janie' and the British registration were just because the plane was bought this way, and Etienne was happy with this.
Though Etienne flies this plane on different airshows throughout the summer, his ambition is not to take this to a next level and participate for instance in the 'Red Bull Air Race'. "I fly purely for fun, and some instruction" as he states it.

The pictures he took, required some special preparation. Not only did the surroundings need to be right, the camera needed to be fixed to the wing using a special profile... and a lot of tape. The aircraft speed were up to 400 km/h, accelerations were between +7 and -5 G, and the camera was not an ordinary 'snapshot' machine, but a very expensive Canon - remote control operated off course.

From left to right: Etienne Verhellen, Alain De Nys of Bombardier Swiss Chronographs and Peter of the flyforfun.be-team

Cerfontaine airfield

Though they are based in Namur, Etienne and his plane can often be found in Cerfontaine, an aerodrome which was reopened only last year. 'Reopened' since the airfield originally opened in 2000, but needed to close because of difficulties of the operator. The Walloon regional governement invested quiet a lot in the site, and wrote out a call for projects to revaluate the site. 'Gravity Park', a company of aviation and financial professionals, won the tender with a project that reaches out to all airsports. Ultralights, gliders, airplanes, parajumpers, helicopters, ... everybody is welcome at 'EBCF'.

At the moment about 25 aircraft of all sorts are based here, but that will increase in the future. In a next phase, the construction of 40 houses with a private hangar will start. This is a unique opportunity in Belgium to live 'with' your airplane... More information on this project will be given in the coming months, but in the meantime you're free to contact the people of Gravity Park on their 'info' e-mail address.

Yak Fly-In

If you want to discover the airfield and it's beautiful surroundings near the 'Plate Taille' and 'L-Eau d'Heure' lakes, the Yak fly-in might be a nice opportunity. Maybe you also win a BB-3 pilot watch as Etienne did last year. After all, every participating pilot enters in a draw and can win one PocketFMS license on the fly-in, and a watch at the end of the year.

PocketFMS users (aren't we all in the meantime - visit www.pocketfms.com if you haven't discovered this great tool yet) will also be interested in the fly-in that Marcel and Rob organise in Cerfontaine on September 6th and 7th, 2008.

Websites

You can visit Etienne's site here, and other Yak pilots on www.yakkes.com. If you want to do some acxro with him, either as a passenger or to learn some aerobatic routines as a pilot - Etienne is a fully qualified instructor after all - you can contact him directly on +32 (0)473 27 21 86

Some photo's can be found here or also here. Background information on the Yak can be found here and you can even find a movie of Etienne's airshow routine on the Internet.

Information on the Cerfontaine airfield can be found here