Hi again, I hope you enjoyed a relaxing Easter break.
The airshow season has recently drawn to a close, with only three out of the five proposed events taking place this season. Whitianga and Hamilton were unfortunately cancelled, however, flying displays at Tauranga, Ohakea and Wanaka still thrilled crowds, many of which NZFF members attended and met up at, with an abundance of photographic coverage being posted in the forums. Check out the spectacular images in the Real World Aviation forums, in particular Gavin Conroy’s professional air to air shots, and Alister ‘Albatross’ Curnow’s Warbirds over Wanaka video that made it onto the New Zealand Herald website!
Alister was the winner of the Vincent Aviation sponsored screenshot competion last month, earning himself a direct flight from Wellington to Wanaka on the morning of the Warbirds over Wanaka 2008 airshow. He was also fortunate enough to be offered the cockpit jumpseat aboard the Dash 8-100 aircraft during takeoff from NZWN, where he took the opportunity to film this video here.
Myself and Victor_Alpha_Charlie were also onboard this same flight (photographed below by Ron Cuskelly as we taxied into park at Wanaka), and onboard the return flight, we were given special clearance to do a low-fly by over Wellington International. You can see a short video clip I filmed of this here.
Anyway, with the arrival of April comes NZFF Birthday Season, as we celebrate our second online anniversary on the 22nd of this month. To commemorate this, we will be holding a simple online fly-in for both FS2004 and FSX simmers (together on the same server) for a virtual meet and greet- more details to be posted in the announcements sub forum soon!
Also, the NZFF Easter Egg hunt will continue for the remainder of the new month giving members an additional 30 days to find the location of the 11 hidden scenery objects, appearing to be a little harder than I first thought. See this thread for more information.
In other news, one of our talented arty members, Jan Kees Blom, has been busy creating virtual renditions of real life kiwi Harvards of the Roaring 40’s aerobatic display team, a regular feature in the above mentioned airshows seen this summer. These can be downloaded via links from this thread, provided you have the Alphasim payware base model… and while you’re at it, why not try and recreate their aerobatic performance above the special REAL NZ Wanaka airshow? Get it here!
Finally, please take the time to vote for a winner of the March screenshot competition here, and enter the April ‘topdressing’ themed competition here.
Cheers,
Trolly and the NZFF Admin team
