problems. Quite a few more local entrants turned up on Saturday to give us a total of 54 competitors with just a little shy of 80 aircraft. This was the best turnout we have had for an ANZAC Jet Meet. It was also the best attendance we have had from Australia with 14 making the trek over from as far away as Perth. These days we were seeing a wide array of aircraft from the very well proven ARF Boomerangs to the scratch built 4 meter long, twin turbine, MIG 25 built by Clinton Kraidy as a school project. The MIG weighs 55kg and is powered by two ATJ – 170 turbines which seem to give it plenty of authority. Clinton also does a great job on the sticks flying it too. Another true work of art was Colin Austin’ s scratch built Panther F9F powered by a Behotec 180 G. This aircraft weighed in at 23 kg and flew beautifully. Unfortunately due to a nose wheel collapse on landing, that magnificent paint job took a close up view of the asphalt surface. Another new aircraft was Mayur Topiwala’ s composite ARF Ultra lightning powered by an Evojet 180 VX. This is a superb looking model. Our two competitors from Adelaide, Vin Pike and Rick Davies travelled with Ricks Elan powered by a Jetcat P80 and Vins Electric Habu 2. Both of them getting plenty of air time.
Neil Giggins from Perth with his Jetcat powered Boomerang Nano. Packs up nicely for the long trip.
Also becoming more popular at our jet meetings are the turbine powered helicopters. Carl Hansen does a great job of flying both of his scale machines, the ML Mil24 HIND powered by a PAHL GPH 70 and his Bell 206 Longranger powered by a Wren 54. These machines look magnificent in the air and Carl flies them very scale like. Also we had Lloyd Bushby flying his Airstar Jetcopter and Pete Brown with his trusty Robbe Quatro which are both sport type machines.
As Saturday flying wound to a close, the night was about to start. Starting off with 60 of us having dinner at the Tokoroa club and a few cleansing ales followed by more ales … stories … ales … lies … ales and problem solving. Half the reason for attending these events is for the camaraderie that follows them.
SUNDAY To kick the morning off we knock over the NZJMA AGM. Due to the size of this event it is really the only opportunity we get to have the majority of our membership together in one place. Elections, previous minutes, general business and a couple of sub committees formed in under an hour, and then we are back into it. Again the weather was perfect and with the winds getting lighter, leaving no time wasted getting into the air. Today we seemed to be seeing more of the larger models in the sky. The Skymaster Phantoms of Pete Brown and Dave Hodges, The MB339 Machi of Tony Whithey, Rene Redmond’ s Strikemaster and the A10 Warthog of Jared Mulholland to name a few. Also the two Airworld BAE Hawks of Paul Conner and Peter McGregor’ s, but unfortunately Pete’ s aircraft suffered an engine failure at the worst possible time, at about one second after take off. It was quickly put back on the ground with minimal damage.
Two of the higher performance aircraft flying were Andrew Stiver’ s Simjet powered Rookie and my new Jetcat P140 RX powered MAS Vigilante. Both aircraft demonstrated the performance levels capable of theses jets with very high horizontal and vertical speeds. Steve Engle was manned on the radar gun and clocked my Vigilante at the highest ever recorded speed of an R / C jet within Australia or New Zealand at 384 kmh on one pass and 340 kmh in the other
Max, with his 2 sons Daniel and Ben make up the Jameson family from Sydney with their Jetcat P120 powered Reaction.
Mayur Topiwala’ s Evojet 180 VX powered Ultra lightning
Tarquin Brooks and Rene Redmond with Reds Comp ARF Flash