Seven-time South African unlimited aerobatics champion and Red Bull Athlete Patrick Davidson finished in third place overall in the 2024 Air Race X Series in his Zivko Edge 540 V2 air-race aircraft that was flown over three rounds in May, September and October. The series, running for the second time, saw eight of the top air-race pilots from around the globe competing in their home countries against each other on identical racetracks from remote locations using the latest GPS technology and flight data measured by dedicated sensors mounted on the aircraft with a measuring accuracy of 3 centimetres to negotiate their way around the imaginary pylons that are plotted on the course map. The Zivko race-specialised aircraft is capable of a top speed of 426 km/h and subjects the pilot to up to 11G of acceleration force during a timed run.
Davidson and his team-mates Mark Hensman who serves as technician / mechanic and Greg Ritz the team coordinator managing all of the data from each flight chose the Grahamstown Flying Club as their base for the competition flights. Going into round three of the series Davidson was in third place overall with the window period being from the 4th – 12th October where 5 competition flights had to be flown and logged and the lead time to beat had already been set by Australian Matt Hall with a time of 63.902 seconds.
With favourable weather conditions on the 8th October the first practice run was used to confirm that the pylon markers were in the correct places and practice runs two and three used to collect data to plot and calculate the correct lines to fly. With each run frustration started to grow with numerous pylon strikes an incorrect heights leading to penalties being accrued on each run. After 2 days of practice runs all the team had to show for their efforts was not one clean run in 11 rounds with two aborted efforts and a total of 16 penalties. A dejected Davidson said “Something was very wrong, but what? We removed all the cameras from the plane and made a foil base for the GPS receiver and did another practice flight. It didn’t work. I could not get a clean run and our times started slipping because the weather was deteriorating and I was now flying so conservatively just to make sure that I don’t get pylon hits but we kept getting hits and penalties. We were all browsing social media and we noticed pictures of the southern lights, an aurora or solar storm. Greg started investigating the effects of this phenomenon and it became apparent that a G3 geomagnetic storm had hit on the 9th of October and the effects that it has on GPS signals is massive. We could only assume that this is why we were not getting any clean runs. Greg got confirmation from the South African Space Agency who with the Space Weather Forecasters confirmed that the GPS signal was unreliable during this time. We then contacted the ARX Race Director and informed him of our situation, we had kept them in the loop all the way and they were fantastic in supporting us through this unpredictable situation. After a lengthy conversation and sending data and findings they thankfully agreed to extend our race window period to mid-morning on Sunday the 13th .”
Davidson finally managed to log the first of his qualifying runs after a massive 35 attempts to get a clean run, with a time of 65.772 seconds with no penalties securing his place in the final shootout between the top three where it was 51-Year old Japanese pilot Yoshi Muroya who was crowned champion with Matt Hall in second followed by Davidson in third.