The first weekend of March saw a fleet of scale helicopters take over the NSMAC field in Auckland.
Originally conceived by the late Brett Cudby, the event was in limbo following his sudden passing. In a discussion between some of the senior scale guys following the farewell to Brett- it was decided that the best way to remember our good friend was to carry on.
With the generous assistance of the NSMAC Committee and the club members, the field was given over to the Heli guys for the duration of the event. While this event was not advertised to the public, we still had a good crowd of family, friends and club members who came along on the weekend to see the machines and meet the flyers.
The event saw scale machines of all sizes and shapes- from a wee Nine Eagle Blackhawk to the large scale machines. Present were 5 of the largest scale machines around- including the brand new Hughes 500E, flown first by Matthias Strupth, owner and chief designer at Heli Classics, over here for the test and check flights, and then it was flown with flair by the very proud owner Carl Hansen.
Friday was the first day of the event, with the first of several flights of the super scale Vario Skycrane. Owned by Colin Peard and flown by Simon Lambert, this was an impressive machine in the sky and up close. One of the guests from Oz who at the field on Saturday has actually judged scale helis at the IRCHA event in the US- and told Colin that while he has judged several other Skycrane machines in that competition- the detail and execution by Colin on his Skycrane exceeds all of those machines! This is a high complement- and a fair recognition of Colins’ skills. The day was completed with a session of Dusk Flying- with
Above: " Close view of the detail in the Vaario Skycrane rotor head "
Left: " Colins Skycrane flown by Simon- well done!"
Below: Some of the machines present for the event including Carl’ s MI V24
Bottom: " Carl ' s MI V24 looking very menacing- a crowd favourite”
Simon and his very sweet Airwolf leading the way. We should do that more often!
Saturday revealed that the herd of cows from the paddock next door wanted to join the fun- and came into the paddock during the night. It turns out that Tony and Jay both k n e w h o w t o‘ persuade’ the cows to go back where they came from- and the rest of the event was cow-free.
The day was warm, sunny and saw a large amount of flying. 2 of the machines that always drew a crowd were the new Hughes 500- and the MI V24- both owned and flown b y C a r l. B o t h m a c h i n e s h a v e turbine power plantsand are also fairly