Page 33 - MFW June 2025

In August 2024 the Soaring Special Interest Group held a trial in Hawkes Bay to
select the 2025 F5J New Zealand team. There were five interested trialists
amongst the competitors, and the result was that Joe Wurts, Peter McEvoy and
Kevin Botherway were selected for the NZ team to defend our team gold
medals over the prior two F5J World Championships.

We held three practice weekends in Matamata to enable the team to practice
together and discuss strategies and best possible solutions. A huge thanks to Bill
Derenzy who organized for us to use the “goat farm” field and to those locals who
turned up to provide planes in the air so we could get used to flying in a busy sky. All
three of the team practiced at home fields before leaving for the event.

Ground Owl seen everywhere
The team appointed David Pratley from Australia as team
manager. He has helped the NZ team at many world
champs in the past and deserved this appointment. All
the relevant paperwork, team shirts, model labels, NZL
flags, National Anthem, tools, repair kits were all packed
into 4 large corflute model boxes along with 14 odd
models and spares. We had 5 people in total heading to
Argentina including Peter’s Wife - Caroline attending as
helper and supporter.
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Flights for the Kiwis was a little harder than previous trips
to Argentina as Air NZ doesn't go there anymore so it
meant a transfer in Santiago, Chile on the way to and
from Argentina. With the big aircraft crates as usual the
airports were like zoos and had huge queues for customs
etc but all in all the transfers went smoothly. Fortunately,
the Argentine officials had advised customs that there
would be heaps of models coming into the country which
were all pre documented etc.

Our first day of practice was at the Salvador Ranch (A bit
west of the WC field) with many thanks to Rodrego
Salvador for allowing a few early arriving teams to use The Circus with Joe at the Tango cup
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