Saturday and Sunday , Great weather and good entries . The grass events at Horotiu had 8 entries in F2B but only one in Sportsman aerobatics so Saturdays flying finished about mid afternoon and that gave the Sunday team race fliers a chance to sort out their models for the next days competition . With a big entry in Combat and good entries in most other classes Sunday was always going to be a long day .
Sunday . First event was combat with nine entries . Loads of fun for everybody plus quite a few re-fly ' s stretched the program a bit but in the end it was that flier from Rotorua John Ryan with a Liquidator powered by a Silver Streak that won the day although he did have to borrow a model for the last two flights . Thanks to Kevin Barnes for that .
Slow Goodyear had 8 entries although we had one scratching before we started . Some good racing and it was most enjoyable especially for some of the guys who do not fly very often . There was lots of swapping around of pilots and pitmen but it all worked out in the end and gave us a great final .
Classic A Team race , 5 entries . The heat times were ok but look how close the final was . Owen Rogers flew a model loaned to him by Laurie Chrystall . Owen has a new model almost ready to fly and it has been made to take the Fora motor and the Super Tigre G20 .
Classic B only had two entries but that is one more than usual so we were able to run a couple of races . Adrian Hamilton ’ s new model had its first race and promptly broke the speed limit of 5 minutes race time . During the second heat Adrian ’ s model picked up Johns lines when landing so that was a DQ for Adrian and a non finish for John , but at least we had a race . Both models were powered by Enya 29s .
Saturday night we had the usual BBQ at our place , 25 people and the weather was so mild we sat outside until close on 10 o ’ clock .
A big thank you to Ashley for mowing the circles two Fridays in a row . On the day before the Champs we used two of Ashley ’ s ride on mowers . By mowing first without the catcher then going over it again with a lower setting and a catcher I think we had a far better circle than we usually have .
Thank you to Karen Barnes and Andrew Robinson for judging aerobatics . Andrew , Brendan , Dave , Kevin for combat . All the guys for timing and lap counting team race .
Thanks to Helen ably helped by Wendy Wright for the BBQ and to those that cleaned up and washed dishes after it was all over We also had a special attendee . Hans Vissor from the Netherlands is our FAI representative at the meetings in Paris . And for those of you who know what an FMV team race motor is , well he is the V on the side of that motor .
Top to bottom : Magnum in the midst of a horizontal figure-eight Don Robinson ’ s away in F2B Graeme Duncan ' s Nobler The South Circle during F2B