Kempsey Airport was a hive of aerial activity last week when a scale model air force of turbine (jet) powered radio controlled aircraft belonging to the members of the the SkyAces RC club came to town.
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The mid north coast based club held a limited fly-in with 10 pilots to test the waters for future events with more aircraft.
The flying machines range in scale from ⅓ to ⅛ scale and are either a faithful replica of an actual aircraft or a contemporary ‘sport’ designs and can represent an investment of tens of thousands of dollars.
The sport models can reach speeds of 450 km/h, the scale designs are considerably slower but are designed to replicate the flying characteristics of the actual aircraft.
Sky Aces club president Levi Wagener said the club was attracted to Kempsey because of the facility at the airport and the support they received from the Kempsey Shire Council and the Kempsey Flying Club.
“Kempsey Airport is ideal for us because of the layout and the lack of commercial passenger aviation activity,” Mr Wagener said.
“This has been a couple of years in the making and it couldn’t have happened without the help we got from the council and Bill Gibbons at the Kempsey Flying Club.”
The SkyAces were also keen to show the airport’s neighbours that they could run a flying weekend with limited noise impact on the local community.
“That has been really important to us to make sure that we are welcome and don’t cause any problems and the response we have had so far has been good and I would rate the weekend as a success.
“With all the pilots coming from out of the area it adds some economic activity to the town as well.”
Mr Wagener said the cost of the aircraft varied greatly but some of the more sophisticated models could be expensive.
“I hope my wife doesn’t read this but my Mig-29 costs about $35,000,” he said.
“It is powered by two German made turbines which idle at 33,000rpm and at full power spin at 150,000rpm.
“Safety is a big issue for us so the models all feature multiple redundant systems for control which means you have to have several failures for their to be a problem.
“On the weekend I had a warning that I had a battery failure, but I couldn’t find the fault so I parked it just in case.”
Have a look at the the SkyAces RC facebook page for more information, photos, and video.
