by Mike Goulian, IAC 11878
The document you’re looking at comes from my Unknown Sequence book that I created while I was competing in International Aerobatic Club competitions.
We called these SLUMS - short for “single line unknown maneuvers”. In competition. the “Unknown” is a sequence made up by the contest jury and has never been seen or flown by the competitor. It is the great separator in aerobatic competition.
There are literally hundreds of maneuvers and combinations that can be presented in a sequence. For me, preparation was everything. I literally flew and documented almost every difficult or “tricky” maneuver that could be given in the unknown.
It was just as important to write down how the plane “feels” doing a certain maneuver as much as how to move the flight controls themselves. Sergei Boriak (my coach) and I worked on these for hours and hours.
If I was going to lose as contest, it might have happened because I didn’t fly well enough but I could say with 100% certainty that it wasn’t because I was not prepared.
My book is filled with 25 pages of SLUMS. As the saying goes, only perfect practice makes perfect. Hard work and determination trump God-given talent any day! I thank my dad for instilling a hard work ethic in me! It’s great because I can say without a doubt that there are many pilots out there who are more talented than me, so I just made up for it by digging hard every day.
