Zulu Romeo: Good Start - 1974 World Gliding Championships, Waikerie, South Australia
Produced and Directed by Johnnie Walker
DVD, Format: NTSC and PAL, Duration: 50 minutes
Digital editing and format conversions by Kempton Izuno - Thank you Kempton!
DVD and DVD case artwork by Paul Remde

Note: The original masters of this film were destroyed by fire many years ago.  This is a digital copy made at some time, by someone.  The quality is only OK.  As you can see in the image captures below, the colors are not vivid and there are defects such as streaks and fuzz on the film, etc.  It is not horrible, but it is not great either.  A few minutes into the film, you won't notice the quality issues.  The audio is quite good and the story is great.  I'm confident you'll enjoy it very much as long as you don't expect high quality or high-definition.

Review by Paul Remde
This is a great soaring film. If you love "The Sun Ship Game", you'll also love this film. It has many soaring legends in it: Helmut Reichmann, George Moffat, Ingo Renner, Tommy Beltz, Hans-Werner Grosse, Klaus Holighaus, etc. It does a great job of documenting the excitement of the contest. My favorite feature of the film is the way the film makers asked the same questions of several pilots, and received extremely different responses. "Is physical conditioning important?", "Is the crew as important as the pilot?", "Are you flying for your country, or yourself?", etc. The answers really give insights into the minds of the competitors. I love this film.

It has been fun working with producer/director Johnnie Walker to bring this wonderful documentary back to you.  This is a legal and approved version of this film. 

Free 4-page Insert Included
I have included a 4-page insert inside the DVD case which includes black and white promotional materials from the original film release in 1974.  It is a neat trip back in time!

Notes from George Moffat
"What a wonderful thing that Zulu Romeo: Good Start will live again on DVD! For me the Championship was memorable not only for winning, but because it was the most nearly perfect contest I ever flew in some forty years of competing, with an average daily score of 975 points. Johnnie Walker, the producer of the film, has done an extraordinary job of capturing the tension and the drama of the contest together with the interaction of the leading pilots and their crews. The film is very much a human interest story as well as a gliding story at the top level of competition."

Notes from Ingo Renner
"Zulu Romeo: Good Start documents the first Australian World Comps - up to that point in time the best organized World Comps with the best weather. Never before had there been twelve competition days. I was very fortunate to be a part of this contest and made many lifetime friends with competitors and crews. Quite often in my life I look back at this time with great pleasure and the movie is a wonderful record of these memories."

Notes from Hans-Werner Grosse
"The seventies were the great years of experimenting and finding out how to improve your cross-country efficiency. Championships were the best testbeds. Wing loading was a big topic. Some pilots drilled holes through their spars and flew with wings full of water and 70 kg of lead behind their heads. They were probably too heavy. My Schleicher ASW 17 was flying with 80 L of ballast. That was not enough. Start line games were invented. Helmut was very good at it. With the knowledge of the early seventies you would not go far in modern comps, but it was a more adventurous time."

Notes from Producer/Director Johnny Walker
Learn more about the history of this wonderful film from notes sent to me by Producer/Director Johnnie Walker which I collected in an article in my Soaring News newsletter here: http://www.cumulus-soaring.com/newsletter/2011-11/index.htm#Zulu_Romeo_-_Good_Start