direction . The previous record was held by Peter Agnew from Melbourne for about 17 years and was beaten by 10 kmh . I guess we will see what sort of challenge this brings on .
Typically these days we tend to operate the events as more of a get together rather than any serious competition element . Although we do award prizes for different classes , the judging is mostly done behind the scenes . This year we put it back on the pilots to judge Pilots Choice , Best Scale model and Best sport model with our own judges awarding the Best Landing and Best Overall flight . In addition to these categories , we also had a new and innovative challenge this year called the “ Thrust O Meter ”. This was a piece of engineering artwork with a accurately calibrated ( or so Carl Hansen tells me ) set of scales mounted to it to measure the thrust output of each model . The process involves the pilot nominating his believed thrust , compared to the actual reading on the Thrust O Meter . Whoever gets the reading closest to their nominated figure takes out the challenge . Certainly it created a lot of interest , but also opened a few eyes as well .
We were fortunate this year to have a generous sponsorship prize pool to offer with our awards from Z energy , Jet Centre NZ , Intairco , Traplett publications and Hobby City . They shared amongst the categories and awarded as follows :
• Pilots Choice – Jared Mulholland
• Best Scale – Colin Austin
• Best Sport – Roger Perrett
• Best overall flight – Stuart Hellyer
• Best Landing – Andrew Stiver
• Thrust O Meter challenge – Harvey Stiver
By mid afternoon we are in the pack up and clean up mode as quite a few of our competitors have quite a distance ahead of them to travel and others with early Monday morning airline connections out of Auckland . The arrangement MFNZ has established with Air New Zealand to assist the transport of models both domestically and internationally is a huge bonus . All of our international visitors followed the MFNZ required protocol and travelled with Air NZ . Every one of them spoke very highly of how well it worked and how easy it was . The extra baggage charge was minimal compared to the size of the boxes and in some cases not charged at all .
Steve Blackman with his 15 year old Panther
Paul Conner with his magnificent Airworld BAE Hawk
Dave Hodges with his Jetcat P160 powered Skymaster Phantom .
Thanks to all who participated in the event and enjoyed the weekend with us . If you missed this fantastic event you can visit the photo album put together by Steve Engle at : http :// sengle . smugmug . com / photos / swfpopup . mg ? AlbumID = 28095877 & AlbumKey = b8MfBg
Anybody wanting any further information can contact us via our website at : www . nzjma . com or calling one of our contacts listed in the back of this mag .
Lew Woods with his scratch built vampire powered by KJ66 . Lew racked up about 27 flights this weekend .