Page 38 - MFW June 2024

as the model was kitted in the 1940’s. It was great to see
and very much in the spirit of Vintage although I don’t think
we’ve ever seen a dive bomber in Vintage Precision
before.

Kevin Daly attended his first NIFFC event and brought
along free flight models he had stored away for over 40
years.

The Kennedy Precision Power event involves flying a
sport power model with a target time of two minutes for
each of the three flights. Time under or over the two
minutes penalises the score. So the skill is to carefully limit
the length of the engine run by either the amount of fuel in
the tank or by cutting the fuel supply with a clockwork timer Paul Squires winds his Open Rubber model assisted by Ron Pilcher.
so that the model glides down and lands near to two
minutes. In Kennedy Precision, Kevin used the model that
he set the NZ Junior record in Aggregate with over 45
years ago and which still stands! It has been in a storage
box pretty much ever since. The model flew straight out of
the box after all those years!

P30 was closely contested in Saturday’s excellent
conditions. Mike Mulholland flew another Bob White twin
fin design to win dropping just three seconds. Mike’s
model was recently built and trimmed and flew as good as
it looked. Paul Squires was only five seconds behind Mike
and third equal Wayne Lightfoot and Graham Lovejoy
were eight seconds behind Paul.
Kevin Daly timekeeping
Graham Lovejoy launched his last P30 flight into a very for Graham Lovejoy's long
large and strong thermal for an easy 2 minute max. The P30 flight high above.
timer popped the tailplane up soon after the max to Control Kevin continues to
dethermalize the model but the rate of descent of the time Graham's long P30 flight,
while Graham enjoys the
model was about equal to the rate of ascent of the thermal moment.
and the model took another eight or nine minutes before it
landed in the next field only a couple of hundred metres
away.

Dave Ackery was less lucky with his first P30 flight maxing
but failing to DT. It was watched for about 30 minutes
before flying out of site. It was found by Dave the next day
only about 3 km away in open farmland using a yagi aerial
to locate the tracker signal from his model.

Combined Hand Launch/Tip Launch/Catapult Launch
was the most popular event with 10 fliers. All chose to fly
catapult gliders with the top three achieving excellent
scores in the ideal Saturday conditions. Graham Lovejoy
won flying a Stray Cat design with an excellent score just
14 seconds off a perfect score with four maxes in his six
flights. Kevin Barnes (2nd) and Antony Koerbin (3rd) also
scored over 300 seconds with three maxes each.

Mini Combined was also popular with eight fliers, five Rex Bain launching his Kiwi Power Graham Lovejoy launching his
flying Coupes, two A/1 gliders and one 1/2A power model. model into the beautiful Carterton very nice Coupe d'Hiver model
Wayne Lightfoot with his Coupe and Antony Koerbin with a skies. that climbs on just 10grams of
very nice hi-tech A/1 maxed out and Wayne took out the wound rubber.
event with his flyoff flight.

E36 was postponed to the Saturday and was eventually
decided by a fly-off on Sunday morning as the frost on the
grass was dissipating. Such is the performance of these
models that all four competitors maxed out on the Full size Fokker Eindecker practising mock attacks on a DH4 above the
Saturday. Dave Ackery won the fly-off with a good flight of Free Flight Field.
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