North Island Stunt Series - round 5
2000

This was held at the Ashurst Model Fliers site near Palmerston North on Saturday 2nd of September.
Adrian Wellington and Glen Lewis travelled up in the morning to the event for the second time hoping the weather would be a little better than the last trip 2 years ago.
The last time the only flying that got done was by Adrian's Flexi-foil kites that took us for a ride through the grass - yes you guessed it, there was an over abundance of wind!

This year as we approached the site we drew closer to the blackest wettest cloud ever seen on earth and we wondered if we would ever fly this event. Lucky for us the weather was not as bad as it looked as the rainy bits seemed to stay on the hills surrounding the site. Overlooking us from the south was one of New Zealand's biggest wind farms, a little ironic really as yet again the wind was with us and the turbines were whizzing around! We got out our new planes and readied ourselves for a test flight.
Glen was especially eager to show off his new model having been out of the stunt scene for a number of years. Out came a brand new OS LA 46 powered Gee Bee R2 Racer adapted for aerobatics by Pat Johnston of the USA. This brought out a few raised eye brows along with Adrians semi-scale Seafire. Sadly for Adrian the practice flight was its last as an inverted landing saw the tail plane removed.

At about 11.30am the draw was made and flying started soon after. The hot favourites were at the front of the draw and with the South Island ace Paul Lagan putting in a sound first round in the wind the heat was on. Highlights of the first round and in fact all three were the low pull outs of Dave Wright avoiding the ground by what seemed to be only a few millimetres! A few gestures that were made suggested that maybe a new pair of pants were needed! Also was the fate of yet another wing off an Owen Rogers model as it shed an inboard wing mid manoeuvre

Round 2 was perhaps the most demanding as the rain swept in and for the most part of the round we had a shower break in between each flight and during the dry periods the wind seemed to abate a little and most put in a better score than there first round. Again it was hard to look past Paul Lagan with his Ukrainian ready built model with Dave Wright and Owen Rogers putting in solid flights.

Round 3 was a real tricky one with the wind varying all the time as a few strong gusts blew through so it was down to luck as to the air you got to fly in but for the most part all did exceptionally well to cope with the wind and the scores reflected the skill that was displayed in dealing with the conditions.

Thanks must go out to the organisers and the judges for putting on a great day and sitting out in rain and wind although for the most part we were lucky that the rain did come in between flights and not during! At the end of the day as the results were read out by Don Robinson the wind had almost gone and the sun was out but this was short lived as a southerly front was looming.
All in all a great day was had by all. The results show a great contest was indeed the case as the scores were very close. Well done to all!

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