Part two: After briefly meeting up with Daniel from Rotorua and getting ourselves some hot chocolate, Peter Vincent managed to score us passes into the VIP Air BP tent with tables and chairs right on the crowdline! (That’s why we couldn’t make it to the tower at midday- sorry Zac, wish I had your cellphone number so I could have contacted ya!) From there the view was fantastic and we got to see all the landing and departing aircraft nice and close up.
The Polikarpov’s:
Then came Tom’s favorites from the day, the Czechoslovakian L-39’s:
These were only rivalled for noise by the F-111 and the Cessna A37B Dragonfly:
Then came the mock attack of the airfield, with explosions like this happening left right and centre:
The Hawker Hurricane was scrambled from the smoke to get rid of the ‘baddies’ which when shot down, convincingly disappeared behind the end of the hill which Wanaka airport is built upon:
Convair, Hurricane and Kittyhawk do a flyby- the live firing rounds from the P-40 earlier were great:
ZK-TAF on the ground again after ripping up the alpine sky:
The RNZAF operated 297 of these fighters in the Pacific during WWII and were responsible for downing 99 Japanese aircraft destroyed. That’s 46 more aircraft than our airforce currently operates!
My favorite photograph from the day- the Corsair FG1D folding it’s awkward looking frame for us, just like it used to on the aircraft carriers of old.
Finally we made our way back to the ‘apron’ at the end of the flying program where all the happy punters were boarding their return charter aircraft’s back to the cities in time to rewatch the highlights on the evening news:
An outside view of our aircraft for the day, ZK-VAC, which had been stuck in the mud just before and we needed to push out:
The return flight was smooth, with relaxed cockpit visits allowed unlike on other domestic flights. We sat in the back row and listened on the scanner as Peter requested a special low flyby over Wellington airport at 500 feet, then banked over the harbour giving us great views of the city center:
Flyby video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cstMGSg3XyY
We were down on the tarmac at 6.25pm, with me due to check in for my return flight to Auckland at 6.30- I was sure to miss it until a fellow passenger very kindly offered me a lift back to the terminal (saving me $16 if I had called a taxi). I snapped this pic of ZK-VAF as I ran back through the Vincent Hanger out to the carpark:
There wasn’t much to see out of the left side of the 733 on the return flight, with the low sun glaring in my window most of the time- however the sunset from FL170 was quite pretty as we descended into land for a runway 23 approach:
Back home only a few hours after the watching the last Corsair display, I found it hard to believe where I was. At least it was a much warmer 21 degrees at 8 in the evening when I touched down- a great weekend all in all, with many good memories and photos retained to treasure the experience.
I hope you enjoyed reading through my airshow report- sorry for the large excess of images, but I’m sure you understand that this was a once in a lifetime event for me (never been before, hopefully will get to go again in the future though) and posting my snaps up here were the least I could do to share my experience with you readers! I’m very much looking forward to seeing other member’s photos and videos uploaded. feel free to leave a comment if you wish.
Once again, a massive thanks to Tom and Peter Vincent for getting me on the flight, into the airshow and the VIP tent! Happy Easter everyone
As for Tom in his T-shirt all day, I still can't figure out how we aren't still chipping him out of a block of ice 
My problem at this time is I took just over 240 video files during the course of the day. I've narrowed a video down to 20 minutes, but am going to have to shorten it a LOT to fit it in the 10 minute limit over at youtube.. So, I guess watch this space for a video from me 
