Flying New Zealand National Championships 2018 at Timaru

The past few days have been very busy. I've been in Timaru for the Flying New Zealand National Championships! I was not competing but more general dogsbody and landing grid help. It was a lot of fun! There will be several posts over the next few days, but here's a quick one to start off with.

The event is run by Flying New Zealand and is the premiere flying competitions for aero club pilots from around New Zealand. This event was hosted by the South Canterbury Aero Club [well worth looking up if you're in the area]. Most competitors came from winning their regional event competitions [you may recall that I was the Event Director for the Cook Strait region competition last year] although there were a few wildcard events where people could enter for the Nationals and the winner going on to the main competition.

Timaru is a lovely place although very hot each day. I suspect there would have been a bit of sunburn for anyone who didn't make use of the free sunscreen!

Anyone, on to some photos and a video. First up are a few photos from the event days.

A few of the competing aircraft

An event is not complete without a safety briefing!

Hawkes Bay East Coast Aero Club's WA Morrison 3-ship formation team

Pyrocumulus from a local paddock burnoff

Following on from the last photo of the pyrocumulus, here's a video of the same event. It appears the local farmers like a wee burnoff, and while it's a bit hard to see in the video, the top of the cloud is developing rapidly.