G’Day from the Goldfields

 

Sunday, 10 February and nothing but blue sky and a light breeze, perfect flying conditions in Kalgoorlie and it showed with a great turn out of club members and spectators.

 

Careful where you step!,  PC9’s seem to be popping up all over the place with club president Garry Adams and Paul Murnane both recently acquiring these very impressive planes. Paul has been pulling off some awesome manoeuvres under the tuition of Garry, who himself is no slouch when it comes to cutting up some clouds. The PC9 seems to be able to handle just about anything you can throw at it, and some. Whispers of formation flying have been heard but nothing confirmed yet, should be interesting. Garry has also been busy getting his Super Decathlon airborne. A 130 Saito twin powers this mammoth of a plane and it sounds every bit as good as it looks when up in the air, even when doing lazy loops and rolls!  Be sure to checkout our website for some great movie footage of Garry’s “Half Caf Decaf”.

 

It is always good to see new recruits at the club on a regular basis. Trainee pilots, Greg Leech, Ken and Ken Jensen, are all progressing at a rapid rate under the watchful eye of our instructor John Bates, who still provides the static displays for the day.  To be fair, his “Space Baron” helicopter has been getting a workout lately, but only just. 

 

Ray Harding is back up in the air with a “Friday Night Special” after the sad loss of his Willy trainer last weekend. Everybody thought that this plane was unbreakable, it has withstood some serious crashes in it’s time but has always seemed to make it out to the field fully repaired and ready to go by the following Sunday. I think it’s just about a bin job now though. Speaking of bins, after rescuing and modifying a damaged set of wings from an ex-classic trainer out of the bin some months ago, I have finally mounted them into a scratch built fuse and tail. Powered by an OS FX46 this little rocket resembles absolutely nothing you have ever seen, or likely too, but fairly goes for the doctor! At these speeds it surely won’t last long.

 

Lance Witton made a brief appearance with his two well presented planes. He can regularly be seen polishing them after every flight and I am sure he will rub the paint off them eventually! Andrew Yeo showed us all how to dig postholes after his red zephyr MK2 took a dirt nap at full noise. Radio failure is believed to be the cause. A real shame because there was some real quality work that went into making the built up circular fuse.

 

A Fly-In is being held on the 13th and 14th of April for all those who are interested. Come on up to Kalgoorlie and say hi and have a fly. Contact phone numbers can be found at the club website along with some great pictures of some of our members and their models. Check it out. 

 

http://www.kalnet.com.au/gam/

 

Regards

Jarrad Brown

Goldfields Aeromodellers