Flying NZ Cook Strait Regional competition. Success!

This past weekend has been Flying New Zealand's regional competition, this year hosted by Wellington Aero Club [website / facebook] as Hood Aerodrome [Masterton].

As is usual, it was a very busy weekend, with arrivals day on Friday [although I did get some Nanchang flying in 😀] followed by a very busy competitions day on Saturday. We had a full day of competitions, starting with briefings at 07:30 and finishing up around 16:30 with the last of the bombing and liferaft competitions completed.

In case you're interested in competitions or the results, check out the Flying NZ competitions page [https://flyingnz.co.nz/competitions.html]. Scroll down a little for the results.

I'm pretty enthusiastic about competitions, even if for the last 3 years I've been organising them rather than competing. I think that the practice competitors undertake is great for their own skills, it is a lot of fun and it's great for club hours also. A win-win-win situation! Not only that, but the social side of the competitions is good also. Typically there's a relaxed BBQ on the Friday before the competition, "formal" dinner on Saturday after the competitions and lots of laughs and tall stories in between.

Well done to everyone who competed, thanks to all those who helped in any way and congratulations to Wellington Aero Club who took out the main competitions, the Wigram Cup!

If you want to know more about Flying NZ competitions, send me a message, I'm happy to help!

Unfortunately, I was so busy with organising stuff that I didn't get to fly in the Streamer Cutting competition or get to take many photos, but it was an enjoyable day none the less!

I did get a couple of flights in the Nanchang CJ6A on Friday, one of Sunday morning and my flight home on Monday morning. All in all, a lot of fun there. I think I got close to 2 hours of circuits in total, most of them with a crosswind and one session following a Tecnam P2002JF [ZK-WRA from Wairarapa Aero Club] around the circuit. I flew some wider circuits just because of the relative speeds of our aircraft, so that's great practice also.

The trip home was fairly uneventful. The forecast westerly winds were there with a bit of wave going on, but not too much turbulence, although I suspect the Nanchang handles it better than some other aircraft. Airswitch was only 0.6 hours, including a go-around and circuit at Wellington on arrival [something much bigger and faster than me was behind me].