Every year at Easter, Recreational Aviation Australia holds its National Fly In (NatFly). This is an event where RA-Aus members, vendors & interested folks come to meet, attend workshops, review vendor offerings, undertake test flights and show off their aircraft. Aircraft range from powered parachutes & ultralights through to home builds and the latest sport & recreational aircraft. Importers and manufacturers are present to showcase their equipment, the circuit is filled with aircraft undertaking demo flights and the local hotels & bars are filled at night with tall tales and recollections.
We were fortunate to be invited to attend along with the team from Aviation Advertiser, setting up our mobile recording studio in one of the Temora Aviation Museum’s hangars (along with their Mk VIII Spitfire and Cessna A37). We arrived on the Friday morning and departed on the Saturday evening, experiencing two very busy days packed with interviews, discussions, aircraft & equipment inspections and a couple of demo flights.
Suffice to say there was plenty of material captured and we’ve managed to squeeze the best of it into yet another very large episode. We considered splitting it over two but there’s more great content on the way on other topics so we felt it best to pack it all into one large package.
The content we present in this episode is:
- An introduction with Steve, Grant, Ben & Bas
- Brumby Aircraft with Paul Goward
- Laurie Hines and his Revolution Mini-500 helicopter
- John Garton from Leisure Sport Aircraft talks about the Paradise P1 aircraft from Brazil
- Gyrocopter pilot Sam Polyak talks about the EVA Aviacion ELA 08
- Gary Flood from Bert Flood Imports discusses the latest Rotax engines
- Owen Zupp joins us to chat about how he undertakes an air test
- Paul Chernikeef talks with us about Rotec Engineering’s latest radial engines
- Nick Sharples talks about the AVOCET aircraft his father Mike has created from a Jabiru 230
- Tony Blair talks to us about flying aerobatics and RAAF ab initio training
- Jon Johansen from Flymore steps us through the TruTrak EFIS, EMS & autopilot systems on offer
- John Lindner gives us a visitor’s view of the show
- Bryce Hughes joins us from Cub Crafters
- Matthew Maude from Performance Metals Australia gets detailed on metal
- Some of the cockpit audio from Steve’s test flight of a Brumby R600
- John Conte from Aerochute talks to us about their powered parachutes
- Gary Sargeant discusses the amazing EQ1 Wireless Headset he’s invented
We then wrap up the episode with a review of the show between Steve, Grant, Ben & Bas along with a quick chat about the OzRunways application that Bas has been developing.