After a disaster some years ago Pete decided to build another [[Hawker Hurricane]], the initial backbone of the RAF at the start of WWII. Lighter than the original and powered by a DLE55 petrol engine. On a rather dull, overcast, grey chilly day at end of April 2018 it was time for it's maiden flight. With the engine never been started before it was fuelled up and ran for several minutes and some tweaking of the carb needles. Leaving the cowl off for the first flight the Hurricane was piloted by Jon Tappin and put throught a number of manouevres. The engine never faltered. Before the second flight the cowl was refitted. Some of the action is captured here in this video watched by members of Wimborne MAC.
Dave Roger's Spitfire MKII by Hangar 9 (discontinued) fitted with inverted 120 four stroke, 15x8 prop. After some fuel problems it finally got a maiden on a wet, chilly, miserable day with low cloud in January 2018.
Jon Tappin took the maiden after "little" persuasion. After pairing his other Spitfire (unknown brand) to a spare TX it was time to give a formation flight attempt along with a small foamy Spitfire. All good fun! The Spitfire flew superbly and at half throttle just cruised along. Wished I had not sold it to him now ******** Lol
The annual Jet Day earlier was postponed due to poor weather conditions and was given the new date of September 23rd. Generally a bright blue sky but with a "breezy" crosswind howling in from the SSW. However, this time we were not to be beaten and all pilots got at least two flights in. Due to crosswind though some members decided to stay away so numbers were down a little. We had a few edf foamies of which only five flew, the classic F86 of Dave R burned out it's speed controller again, but we had the sight of two Me 163 Komets flying in formation - sort of!
Jets actually flown were two turbine sport jet models plus a [[Bae Hawk]], [[De Havilland Venom]], [[F9F Panther]] and Jiri's new [[L39 Albatros]].
Sunday happened to be the final flight of Weston Park 2017. Jase says he has had a great time in the UK and hopes to come back! It was his first time at Weston Park and he was very impressed. It was a huge show with over 20,000 spectators. The event organizers did a fantastic job on this one he said. He was also honored to have received the "Best of Show" award.
Wimborne MAC Scale Day 2016. Re-maiden flight of John Ireland's Hawker Hunter. Previously it had an issue with landing gear collapse but now sorted. It flew magnificently and is quite fast with ample power. Fuel load is 4 litres which gives good flight times. Flaps definitely needed and used as you will see in the movie.
Port main gear got stuck when retracting, so making some tight turns to see if the "G" would help it up but came down and locked on landing, so that was good.
Piloted initially by the club's test pilot Jon Tappin and then by John himself. Smiles all around.