This unfortunately put a damper on flying activities as pilots were not comfortable in launching their pride and joy into these conditions, especially the more lightweight aircraft. The weather did not improve during the day, and by 15h30 everybody had to run for cover with an approach.
This year, the theme for the event was to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the venerable DC 3 Dakota, and on hand were two identical scale examples in the livery of Springbok Flying Safaris sporting the registration ZS-GPL, both displayed by Andre Kilian. Despite the conditions, Andre carried out a flight display of his big Dak, which could handle the wind and with some stunning flight passes for the spectators showed what this aircraft could do. Unfortunately, after a trial approach and climb-out for a circuit to land, the Dak lost power in the climb and during a cross-wind turn the speed deteriorated into a stall, and with the elliptical wing shape that it has, fatal consequences with a resultant unrecoverable spin.
For this fly-in around 25 pilots registered to fly, although not all of them actually flew, and over 100 visitors attended, most were engaging with the pilots / pilot builders for information on the black art of “electrickery” amps, volts & watts…. Frequency Control was set-up and ably manned by Rob and Andre throughout the day and no incidents were recorded.
There were more demo flights during the day, two being done by National Champion in helicopter aerobatics Arnie Sieling who displayed one of his routines in a big JR competition helicopter with which he took part representing South Africa in the USA recently. He then did an awesome freestyle display in a TREX 500 violating all normal aerodynamic rules of heavier than air flight and showing great skill in manoeuvring the helicopter in the vertical plane.
In the afternoon, Christo vd Merwe and Frik deBeer showed the crowd what Witsblitz racing was all about by racing around the yellow pylons, clearly the choppy wind was having an effect on their controllability of these lightweight aircraft, thus the scores were low in this instance of achieving 15 rounds in the allotted 2 minutes (where normally one would be able to get to over 20 rounds).
Graham Dyer, always an e-fly-in stalwart flew his big cub and twin gyro which impressed the spectators of handling ability in gusty conditions. He also flew a small (under 400 g) delta foamy that was able to do back somersaults on command and all sorts of high rate turns, thanks to big elevons and a very marginal aft CG making the aircraft close to being unstable, and it looks like a delight to fly.
Other aircraft there were able to fly was Rudolph’s big Sukhoi and Jean’s Katana giving excellent aerobatic displays. Daan &Jean also flew two smaller aerobatic aircraft in a synchronised display or at least it looked like it, great to watch two aircraft doing Stall-turns together.
At lunch time, the traditional raffle was run, this time 3 huge prizes up for grabs, one being a big EDF airliner kindly donated by club member Len de Villiers, a Witsblits kit donated by Highflyer and a Hyperion electric motor donated by Cape Sailplanes. This year’s raffle for sure attracted a lot of interest.
Thanks must go out to Highflyer for exhibiting there, and also to Lillian the caterer for supplying great foot-long boerries. Whitehills Radio Flyers actively support all forms of model aircraft and provides special facilities for the Electric enthusiast, in particular on Sundays where the whole afternoon is set aside for quiet flight, but of course in today’s world, we have seen explosive growth in the hobby making flying more accessible to everybody which should keep the annual electric fly-ins alive and well.
The next Electric Fly-in is scheduled for 10 October 2010.
Rob Jonkers
