Page 51 - MFW June 2024

MARLBOROUGH

AEROTOW 2024

The weather gods smiled on Marlborough for the last providing plenty of power to get even the largest gliders up
weekend in April delivering almost perfect flying to release height with ease. This aircraft had fuel system
conditions for three days of scale aero-towing and soaring problems when Ricky took it to Lake Station in February,
over Quaildale Station in the Waihopai Valley. Arrival day so could not be flown then, but at this event it worked
(Friday) was not flyable unfortunately due to blustery NW flawlessly, piloted skilfully by Bevan Allan who towed
winds perpendicular to the runway, but the next three days Ricky’s gorgeous Schleicher Ka8 ‘DI’s Delight’ and many
more than made up for this with wall-to-wall blue skies, other gliders large and small during the weekend.
sunshine and light winds with some gentle autumn
thermals to be had if you could connect with them. Ten There were so many superb models flown at this event it is
pilots plus around twenty gliders and six tow-planes not possible to list and show them all in detail – but here
attended, a slightly lower number of pilots than last year, are a few of the most eye-catching ones.
but this ensured everyone had plenty of opportunity to fly
for as long as desired each day. It also meant we were
never in danger of exhausting the available supply of tugs
or over-loading the tug pilots, which has sometimes been
a concern in years past.

Scale soaring and aero-towing appeals to me and others
for a host of reasons. Many of the aircraft flown are often
impressively large and fly so smoothly and realistically
they are almost indistinguishable from the full-size
versions, especially when the tug and glider are at high
altitude on a long steady climb. There is also a great
variety of interesting scale models at these events – from
vintage 3-4m span floaters made of traditional
balsa/ply/spruce to all composite construction 6, 7, 8 or
even 9m span high performance sailplanes.

The tow-planes are equally impressive to see in action
with the star of this year’s event being Ricky Bruce’s Top to bottom:
superb Robin DR400 with a ZDZ 180 twin cylinder engine Bevan taxies the Robin Dr400.
Ken McMillan's DG1000 waits in the queue for the next tow.
Ka8 climbing out behind the Robin.
Aircraft and Pilots.

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