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Saturday, April 11, 2009

Classic Fighters 2009 #1: Introduction

Wow! Another airshow! This time, it was the Classic Fighters Airshow held at Omaka aerodrome this weekend. As expected it was an excellent airshow and well worth the visit... the only problem is that I took a lot of photos, and now I have to sort them out and try to decide which ones to post. To give you an idea, I took 601 photos. I have culled that down to 442 pictures by eliminating the out of focus [well, most of them!], boring and just plan rubbish :-) shots. Probably a lot more culling to occur.

The day started early enough with an 8:30am departure from Wellington with a full plane and a quick trip across the water to Omaka in Piper PA28-181 Archer, ZK-TDJ. Even with the required run ups and a short departure delay [probably around 0.2 hours], the trip across to Omaka was 0.8 hours from startup to shutdown . We had the same timing for the trip back.

Omaka is one of the aerodromes that still has a quiet "country aerodrome" feel - look in most directions and you could easily imagine it's back in the early days of aviation.

Anyway, enough talk, here are some initial photos! These are just a random selection that I quickly grabbed to give you an idea of what the airshow was like. There will be much more to come over the next week or so. Top to bottom are:

Royal Australian Airforce [RAAF] Caribou, A4-195
De Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk Mk 22, ZK-SAX
Fokker Dreidecker
Royal New Zealand Air Force [RNZAF] UH-1H Iroquois
Supermarine Spitfire Mk IX, ZK-SPI
Formation of North American Harvards
Bristol Frieghter, ZK-CPT
MXR Technologies MX2, ZK-MXT
RNZAF CT4/E Airtrainers, Red Checkers

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4 comments:

  1. PD11 April 2009 at 22:27

    The old bristol freighter taxing about theplace?

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  2. Rodney11 April 2009 at 22:33

    Yep, and more photos coming up in the next few days!

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  3. XPDR14 April 2009 at 13:40

    Rodney - I figured I'd put this here on #1 as opposed to other posts! Great coverage! We dug this up - do you know anything more about this? Much ado about nothing?

    11.April.2009 - One of the New Zealand Air Force aerobatic team Red Checker's planes hit by a bird, during its performance at Classic Fighters Airshow at Marlborough, NZ. The plane separate from the main formation and minutes later joined again, while the pilot ensures the plane is ok. (aerobaticteams.net)

    Mike/Indy Transponder

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  4. Rodney14 April 2009 at 17:49

    Hi Mike,

    All I know is that it occured during a performance on Friday 10th. There was a brief announcement at the Saturday airshow that the display would be held for a minute while they ensured that there were no birds hanging around [ironically by using other aircraft to perform some low passes :-)].

    Needless to say, the crowd enjoyed a minutes "bird scaring" before the display got underway... :-)

    As an aside, I understand that the bird may have been a magpie which is pretty much good news in that they are a nuisance anyway, so no great loss to the nation and small so there's less damage.

    Cheers,

    Rodney

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