SCALE DAY Sunday,28 May 2006

Classes: Military, Civil, both Small and Large Scale. Scale helis welcome THIS IS A FUN EVENT WITH SAFETY PARAMOUNT

Tom Sparkes has agreed to be the Competition Co-ordinator for 2006. The events are conducted by the Competition Directors as advised, with Tom co-ordinating and helping. If you have any enquiries about the competitions, please ring Tom on: 

Speaking of Mr F, his engine gave a loud PHUUTTT while starting at the Combat Day. Three of the four engine backplate screws had fallen out and the last one decided it would give way too!

David Pound has a variation on the plane restraining equipment – 2 red plastic chairs in front of the wings – that doesn’t quite meet the requirements Dave!

Simon Press recently competed at the Canberra Classic Scale Rally and won second and third with the Texan and Lightning respectively in >80' class, and won the perpetual trophy for the year with the Texan.

Thanks to Mark Rickard there is now a metal post driven into the ground at the extreme ends of the field. Now when you want to put out the bungee for your glider you just walk out and clip it on - neat and easy.

2 days after being presented with his Bronze Wings, perennial former student pilot Tom Wolf arrived at the field in suit and tie. Was he trying to establish a new dress code?? NO!! Having got his new-found freedom to fly solo he didn't want to waste a minute and came to Belrose straight from work in the City. 

And speaking of TW, OUCH!!! In a moment of blondeness he disregarded the fact that four-strokes have their needle valves on the other side of the engine and tangled his knuckle with a prop. Four stitches now act as a reminder.

One tanker can only support 3 Hornets, but two was enough for the job. The weather had to be good at the departure and arrival destinations and all aircraft had to be serviceable otherwise the plan wouldn’t work.
Fortunately all worked out well and the fleet took off. The way it works is that the tankers take off with a two minute split, and the Hornets take off all together, we met up over the West Coast and the first tanker starts to commence the brackets (a bracket means that each Hornet in sequential turn fills up), this is the approved method of tanking. As each Hornet cycles through it is given an allocated amount of fuel.
The first tanker did this four times and then broke off from the formation and returned to the US, the second tanker then took over and dragged all the Hornets into Hawaii. In the meantime the first aircraft fuelled up and made its own way to Hawaii.
After a day off (due to time zone changes) the whole procedure happened again, flying from Hawaii to West Samoa. Unfortunately our luck had to run out somewhere, and it was in West Samoa. 
The weather forecast the night before departure forecast that we wouldn’t be able to land at the diverse fields with the required fuel for the Hornets and us, so we had to delay a day. Upon departure we had to leave with a minimum of 4 Hornets, as it happened one had problems starting, so we left 3 Hornets and a tanker behind.
Our formation took off with our tanker offloading all available fuel before breaking off to Noumea to refuel. At that point all the Hornets in the formation proceeded home by themselves.
It took another 2 days and an engine change for the Hornet that didn’t want to start before the last part of the contingent left West Samoa, but with only 3 Hornets they all made it home directly. The whole time the cargo 707 made its own way back from the US.
In all, 3 x 707’s, 7 x FA-18’s and 1 x C130J took part in the Australian deployment to Red Flag ’06, this story will give you an idea of how much behind-the-scenes support is needed for our frontline fighters to participate in overseas exercises. 
I am sure that many of you will have questions (and plenty of them), so just ask me next time you see me.
And if you wish to see more photos please visit the Website

On March 5, 1973. an Iberia DC-9 (Flight 504), collided with a Spantax Convair CV-990 (flight BX400) near  Nantes, France. The CV-990 lost an outboard portion of its left wing and managed to carry out an emergency landing at Nantes. The DC-9 lost control and crashed. 

On June 28, 1965, Pan Am Boeing 707 ( flight 843) experienced an explosive disintegration of the third stage turbine disk of the No. 4 engine. The accident occurred shortly after takeoff from San Francisco, at an altitude of about 800 feet above the ground. Disintegration of the turbine disk was followed by a fire in the No. 4 engine area and an explosion in the outboard reserve fuel tank. The No. 4 engine and approximately 25 feet of the right outer wing separated from the aircraft.
The fire was extinguished and a successful emergency landing was accomplished at Travis Air Force Base, California, with no injuries to the 143 passengers or 10 crewmembers aboard the flight. Boeing officials later said the 707 was not designed to fly with so much of a wing gone, and they were amazed the jet hadn't crashed.

There's a fairly well-documented case of a DC-8 landing safely despite losing about 6 metres of its port wing and the outboard engine after encountering clear-air turbulence over Colorado about a decade ago: